Trial is delayed for Super Bowl

'Saintsmania' tackles Orleans Parish asbestos lawsuit

NOLA.com - The Times-Picayune

Thursday, January 28, 2010

By Gwen Filosa

The judge found in favor of Who Dat Nation.

On Wednesday, Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Michael Bagneris ordered a Feb. 1 jury trial delayed in light of the Saints' historic trip to the 2010 Super Bowl.

"The court takes judicial notice that Saintsmania permeates the city of New Orleans," Bagneris wrote in a one-paragraph ruling in an asbestos lawsuit, filed in 2005 by Dano Paul Becnel against Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Inc., and about 20 others.

 full @ http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1264660350303150.xml&coll=1

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Meet your Silicon Overlords.

 
R2D2 and C3PO. 

Hal 9000. 

Marvin.  Robby.  Gort. 

Huey, Dewey and Louie. 

Conky 2000. 

Daleks. 

Rosie. 

 

...and more.

 

http://www.jeffbots.com/filmbots.html

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Time Waster Alert !!!

  Interactive Map: A Peek Into Netflix Queues

Examine Netflix rental patterns, neighborhood by neighborhood, in a dozen cities. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html?nl=technology&emc=techupdateema5

 
The slider at top lets you move from 'Most Rented' to 'Least Rented.'
Hover your mouse over a neighborhood, and see the top ten rentals in that zipcode.
You can choose a different city by clicking on the right side of the screen.

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Smithsonian.com -- 100th Aniv of Public Broadcasting

The 100th Anniversary of Public Broadcasting

Since its inception, public radio has had a crucial role in broadcasting history - from FDR's "Fireside Chats" to the Internet Age

• By Marina Koestler Ruben
• Smithsonian.com, January 26, 2010
• 
  

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Radio-Activity-The-100th-Anniversary-of-Public-Broadcasting.html
 

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And five minutes after the first broadcast, the public radio station began a pledge drive...

  
 

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My dog can read

 When I returned home one day, I discovered that my mini-dachshund Zambie had destroyed one of my library books.

Note the title of the book.

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Today in Tech History

 DANGER WILL ROBINSON !!!
 
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/01/0125robot-kills-worker
 
 

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Death Star's Trash Compactor? Bad Design.

www.mcsweeneys.net is a treasure trove of good stuff.

 

 

I was introduced to the McSweeney site when a friend sent me a link to an article that described how the Death Star's Giant Trash Compactor  was a very stupid design. 

 

The writer spoofed the obsessiveness of the hard-core Sci-Fi fan as he nit-picked every aspect of it.

 

 http://mcsweeneys/2002/01/10deathstar.html

 
 

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Humor from The Onion

Eagles fans will certainly like this one:
 
 
Vikings Criticized For Not Running Up Score High Enough On Cowboys
 
MINNEAPOLIS—All corners of the sporting world sounded off against the Minnesota Vikings this week for their conduct at the end of their divisional playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys, saying that even after a late touchdown made the score 34-3, the Vikings were obligated by general principle to humiliate the Cowboys further by attempting to score even more points.
 
"As far as I'm concerned, by holding back against Dallas, the Vikings showed a complete disregard for gamesmanship,"said ESPN analyst Mark Schlereth, adding that, when a team has the Cowboys down, stomping on their throats and trying to win by 50 or even 60 points is the classy thing to do. "How about a long bomb to Rice while Terence Newman is half-assing it and looking ahead to next season? Maybe a fake punt? Maybe rubbing their noses in it by sending eight men to cripple Tony Romo? All I have to say is that [Vikings coach] Brad Childress should be ashamed of himself."
 
Vikings quarterback Brett Favre responded to the controversy by saying that no team wants to be on the same field as the Cowboys any longer than they have to be.


http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/vikings_criticized_for_not
 
 

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Beyond Obedience School

  "Do Dogs Know Calculus?"
Timothy J. Pennings, College Mathematics
Journal, vol. 34, no. 3, May 2003, pp. 178-82.
http://bit.ly/8oA0e9
 
 
 "Dogs Don't Need Calculus"
Michael Bolt and Daniel C. Isaksen,
College Mathematics Journal, Volume 41, Number 1, January 2010, pp. 10-16.
http://bit.ly/6ORX8o
 

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"Meat." It's what's for Dinner.

 

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Computers and Software Ads from the 40s to Y2K

 
Computers and Software Ads from the 40s to Y2K
http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
 
Punch Cards!  Mimeograph Machines!  Electric Slide Rules!
 
 
my favorite:
 64K of memory for only $1495
http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads-1970s#admgmxy7rwoz4yk7
 

 The Computer and Software Ads are just part of a much larger site featuring all types of Vintage Advertisements:  http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/

 

  
 

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Project Management for the Apocalypse

 
HOW THE APOCALYPSE WOULD HAPPEN IF HEAVEN WERE A SMALL NON-PROFIT

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/12/8cech.html

 

 

 

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Pseudoscience in Audio

 

A couple of friends of mine troll the web looking for the strangest applications

of "SCIENCE", like the Breatharians who claim to live on air alone. Ya see, they're really 5d beings living in our 3d world.

 

According to the Breatharians: " The real blood stream of the physical body is a form of liquid light. The digestive system is designed to extract or digest the Sound and Light frequencies from our words and thoughts and condense them into liquid light. By changing the frequencies of the heart you change the frequencies of this liquid light, which in turn changes the frequencies of the body."

 

 (Oh, one prominent Breatharian once admitted he would occasionally break his fast by eating a chesseburger and a coke, but it was only for the delightful taste of it, and not for any nutritional needs).

 

 

Here's a recent pseudoscience find:

 

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 Machina Dynamica designs and manufactures specialized products for the audio enthusiast. Our audio accessories incorporate advanced technologies and concepts such as atomic resonance in materials, quantum entanglement, quantum teleportation, mind-matter interaction, vibration absorption in crystals, background laser light absorption and component vibration isolation.   http://www.machinadynamica.com/ 

 

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They sell audio products that work using many layers of bullshit, but my favorite is the Teleportation Tweak

 

from the website:

 

The Teleportation Tweak is a phenomenal new product discovered and developed by Machina Dynamica for improving audio and video systems remotely over long distances. The fundamental principle of operation of the Teleportation Tweak is quantum teleportation.

 

The Teleportation Tweak has a profound effect on the sound of your system: (1) Clearer, (2) More information, (3) Greater frequency extension and (4) Lower distortion. You obtain the the Teleportation Tweak during a phone call to Machina Dynamica from your landline phone or cell phone; you can make the call from any room in your house. The tweak itself takes about 20 seconds and will sound like a series of sharp, mechanical pulses.

 

You will find that the effects of the Teleportation Tweak are instantaneous and that the improvement to sound quality is immediately audible. In fact, if the system is playing at the time of the telephone call, you will be able to hear the improvement taking place while the Teleportation Tweak is being performed. You will find the Teleportation Tweak excels in 3-dimensionality, lushness, inner detail and air. The picture quality of any video system in the house will also be improved -- better contrast and integrity of color and blacker black. You will especially notice better skin tones, saturation of colors, shininess of surfaces, textures of fabrics, etc.

 

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These people certainly deserve the Australian Skeptics' Bent Spoon Award.

 

 

 

 

 

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NY Times: Luminous 3-D Jungle Is a Biologist’s Dream

 
Luminous 3-D Jungle Is a Biologist's Dream

 

James Cameron's otherworldly tale of romance and battle, aliens and armadas, has somehow managed to do what no other film has done. It has recreated what is the heart of biology: the naked, heart-stopping wonder of really seeing the living world. The real beauty of it, though, is that you do not have to be a scientist to enjoy the experience.

 

Mr. Cameron somehow has the audience seeing organisms in the tropical-forest-gone-mad of the planet Pandora just the way a biologist sees them. With each glance, we are reminded of organisms we already know, while marveling over the new and trying quickly to put this novelty into some kind of sensible place in the mind. It is a mental tickle, and wonderful confusion sparks the thought, "Oh, that looks like a horse, but wait, it has six legs and it's blue, and whoa, that looks like a jellyfish but it's floating in the air and glowing."

 

To so strongly experience these kinds of wonderfully shocking similarities and dissimilarities among living things is the kind of experience that has largely been the prerogative of biologists — especially those known as taxonomists, who spend their days ordering and naming the living things on Earth. But now, thanks to Mr. Cameron, the entire world is not only experiencing this but also reveling in it.

 

 
full @
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/science/19essay.html

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Beware of Web Sites Ending in .cm

 Beware of Web Sites Ending in .cm
 
Urls ending in ".cm"—which originate in the country of Cameron—pose the greatest risk (36.7%) of picking up a virus.
 
(Internet users often end up on .cm by mistakenly leaving out the "o" in ".com," and malware spreaders take advantage of this common error).

 The ubiquitous ".com" domain itself also is risky, with 32.2% of all sites checked by McAfee containing some kind of unwanted malware.

 

The Chinese domain ending, ".cn" is the third most dangerous at 23.4%.

 

 

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The Crackpot Index

The Crackpot Index, a simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

a few examples:

5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".

10 points for each statement along the lines of, "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".

10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.)

20 points for naming something after yourself. (e.g., talking about the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)

20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".

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Seen in Austin, TX

 

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: You can't make this stuff up.

from Paul S.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6989291.ece

 

 

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LOL Dogs

 
Why should cats have all the fun ?

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The reason we didn't catch him

from my friend John:

 

Some have speculated that the reason U.S. Intelligence ignored the warning about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underpants bomber, from his own father is that he sent them an e-mail:

 

YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE NEEDED.  I AM A NIGERIAN BANKER . . . . .

 

 . . . . and they read no further.

 

 

 

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FW: Why it happened

from my friend Paul S.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/01/haiti_the_devil_and_pat_roberton.html?hpid=topnews

 

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  While reading this story, imagine Johnny Nash singing,
"I can see clearly now, my brain is gone..."

 

 

 

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science humor from xkcd

 

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Most Dangerous Office Object

 
 You didn't get this link from me.

    No, you didn't.

 

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/st_dangerous_object/

 

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For Number Geeks

  

Submitted for your approval:

 

http://www.numbergossip.com/

 

 

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Terry Pratchet quotes

Terry Pratchet's best known for his "Diskworld" series, which now contains 36 books. They're funny fantasy (Diskworld is a flat world supported on the back of 4 elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle), and parody a broad range of topics, including other sci-fi and fantasy writers.

  =====

 

This was turning out to be the longest winter in living memory, so long, in fact, that living memory itself was being shortened as some of the older citizens succumbed.
 
Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go.
 
Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb "The pen is mightier than the sword," and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase, "only if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp."
 
Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course — it was not round and shiny — but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.
 
With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.
 
Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ...

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The End is Nigh !

 

 

 

 

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: Post Avatar Depression

from my friend Marc: 
 
Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues
 
 (CNN) -- James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
 
A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.
 
"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "
 

full @ http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

  =====
 

 Perhaps every ticket to Avatar needs to be sold with a waiver, signed by the ticket buyer, which states:

 

I understand that Avatar is a movie. The Na'vi do not exist. The planet Pandora does not exist. If I become depressed or suicidal after watching this figment of someone's imagination, I freely admit I cannot tell Fantasy from Reality and that I might as well believe in Pixies and Unicorns, and I do not hold James Cameron responsible for my stupid child-like delusions.

 
     

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putting things into perspective

 American journalist Harry Golden once wrote:

"I have a rule against registering complaints in a restaurant; because I know that there are at least four billion suns in the Milky Way – which is only one galaxy. Many of these suns are thousands of times larger than our own, and vast millions of them have whole planetary systems, including literally billions of satellites, and all of this revolves at the rate of about a million miles an hour, like a huge oval pinwheel. 

Our own sun and its planets, which includes the earth, are on the edge of this wheel. This is only our small corner of the universe, so why do not these billions of revolving and rotating suns and planets collide? The answer is, the space is so unbelievably vast that if we reduced the suns and the planets in correct mathematical proportion with relation to the distances between them, each sun would be a speck of dust, two, three and four thousand miles away from its nearest neighbour. 

And, mind you, this is only the Milky Way – our own small comer – our own galaxy. How many galaxies are there? Billions. Billions of galaxies spaced at about one million light‑years apart (one light‑year is about six trillion miles). Within the range of our biggest telescopes there are at least one hundred million separate galaxies such as our own Milky Way, and that is not all, by any means. The scientists have found that the further you go out into space with the telescopes the thicker the galaxies become, and there are billions of billions as yet uncovered to the scientist's camera and astrophysicist's calculations."

When you think of all this, it's silly to worry whether the waitress brought you string beans instead of limas. 

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More Words of the Year:

From the American Dialect Society

The Word of the Year is "tweet" 

(a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and the act of sending such a message) 

The word of the decade is "google" 

(a generic form of the trade name Google, meaning "to search the Internet", which Google's trademark  lawyers will wince to read). 

The thematic winners were: 

Most Useful:

"fail" 

(An interjection uttered when something is egregiously unsuccessful); 

Most Creative

"Dracula sneeze" 

(covering one's mouth with the crook of one's elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape); 

Most Unnecessary

"sea kittens" 

(fish, according to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who have been running a campaign arguing that if fish were called sea kittens, people would be less likely to hurt them); 

Most Outrageous

"death panel" 

(a scare phrase from the recent US controversy over health plans, a supposed committee of doctors or bureaucrats who would decide which patients were allowed to receive treatment, ostensibly leaving the rest to die); 

Most Euphemistic

"hike the Appalachian trail" 

(to go somewhere to have sex with one's illicit lover, which follows a statement by the Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, who said he was going hiking when he really went to 

Argentina to visit his mistress); 

Most Likely to Succeed

"twenty-ten" 

(a pronunciation of the year 2010, as opposed to saying "two thousand ten" or "two thousand and ten"). The words deemed least likely to succeed were any names of the decade 2000-2009, such as Naughties, Aughties or Oughties.

 

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Ahmadinejad's Official Website Reportedly Hacked

 
Hackers attacked the official website of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Monday, reportedly managing to post a message mocking the Iranian president.
 
According to the New York Times' Lede blog, the hack was first reported on the blog of a technology consultant named Austin Heap, whom the Times described as "active in the effort to provide Iranians with tools to circumvent Internet censorship this year."
 
Heap wrote on his blog "someone seems to have had their way with Ahmadinejad's web servers," and that he was redirected to the following message upon trying to access Ahmadinejad's site:
 

Dear God, In 2009 you took my favorite singer - Michael Jackson, my favorite actress - Farrah Fawcett, my favorite actor - Patrick Swayze, my favorite voice - Neda. Please, please, don't forget my favorite politician - Ahmadinejad and my favorite dictator - Khamenei in the year 2010. Thank you.

 
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/05/ahmadinejads-official-web_n_411803.html

Note: A video on YouTube showed Neda Agha-Soltan killed by an unknown gunman during June riots in Iran.

 

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NY Times: Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier

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My friend John commented:
 
"Another research finding from the pages of "Duh" magazine "
  

HEALTH   | January 05, 2010 Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier By NICHOLAS BAKALAR A large Australian survey found evidence that even among childless women, those who lived with a mate put on more pounds than those who lived without one.

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Security Alert: Binsservicesonline Scam Spreading on Facebook

Security Alert: Binsservicesonline Scam Spreading on Facebook and SEO Poisoning

Websense Security Labs(TM) ThreatSeeker(TM) Network has discovered several spam messages on Facebook that trick the user into visiting BINSSERVICESONLINE(dot)INFO.
 
When the link in the message is clicked, the Web site redirects the user to an online scam site similar to the one we published in the blog Google Scam Kits in mid-December. The use of Facebook to distribute links that lead to Google scam kits is fairly new, and is sure to trick some users into buying the kits.
 
A lot of users have apparently received this message, as it quickly became a popular search string on Google. As we've seen in the past, there are criminal groups monitoring the popular search terms on Google and other search engines to start their own malicious attacks, so it didn't take long until we started seeing Google search results for BINSSERVICESONLINE leading to rogue AV products.
 
Note that the two attacks are done by separate groups of criminals. One group started the spam attacks on Facebook and another started manipulating Google results.
 

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Twoddler !

 Toddlers + Fisher Price + Twitter = Twoddler !

 

A group of Belgian university students from the Expertise centre for Digital Media (EDM) at Hasselt University created the Twoddler: a Fisher-Price busy-board connected to an Arduino that transmits toddlers' play into reassuring tweets for their parents

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/13/toddlers-fisher-pric.html

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more Words of the Year

> WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 671 Saturday 2 January 2010
 MORE WORDS OF THE YEAR
 
The WOTY season continued this week with a  list of words from the Oxford University Press that summed up 2009.

 They were chosen by Susie Dent, dictionary expert of the Channel 4 television programme Countdown and author of several annual volumes about word change from Oxford. Some have been mentioned here already, such as UNFRIEND (though she also includes DEFRIEND as an alternative), STAYCATION, BOSSNAPPING, EPIGENOME and GEOENGINEERING.
 
Others in her list are ZOMBIE BANK (a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support), JEGGINGS (close-fitting leggings of a fabric that resembles denim; from "jeans" plus "leggings"), and FREEMIUM (a business model in which some basic services are provided free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content; from "free" plus "premium").
 

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