A funny, yet eerily accurate look at the life cycle of Apple products.
The fallacy of the "Bible Code"
Famous skeptic Michael Shermer does a good job poking holes in Michael Drosnin's Bible Code II bestseller in Shermer's 12 May 2003 column in Scientific American. The column applies to these types of "codes" in general.
I liked this part in particular:
… in 1997 Drosnin proposed this test of his thesis [about bible codes]: "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."
Australian mathematician Brendan McKay did just that, locating no fewer than nine political assassinations secreted in the great novel, along with additional discoveries in War and Peace and other tomes (see http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html). American physicist David E. Thomas predicted the Chicago Bulls's NBA championship in 1998 from his code search of Leo Tolstoy's novel. He also recently unearthed "the Bible code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax" from Bible Code II (see http://www.nmsr.org/biblecod.htm).
In addition to his Moby Dick and War and Peace analysis, Brendan McKay has a nice collection of links about these type of codes.
Naughty wedding announcements
Jay Leno often shows funny (usually naughty) wedding
announcements. Just to refresh your memory, weddings are
announced in the form of BridesLastName-GroomsLastName. So
anyway, last Monday he had a bunch of hysterical ones. Here they
are (it helps to say some of them out loud):
Dueitt-Kute
Long-Ouch
Dugger-Bush
Beaver-Hunt
Eaton-Boner
"Arms race" between Iraqi insurgents and US military
A fascinating look at the "arms race" underway between the Iraqi insurgents, and the US military. From a Newsweek article:
Counterinsurgency experts are alarmed by how fast the other side's tactics can evolve. A particularly worrisome case is the ongoing arms race over improvised explosive devices. The first IEDs were triggered by wires and batteries; insurgents waited on the roadside and detonated the primitive devices when Americans drove past. After a while, U.S. troops got good at spotting and killing the triggermen when bombs went off. That led the insurgents to replace their wires with radio signals. The Pentagon, at frantic speed and high cost, equipped its forces with jammers to block those signals, accomplishing the task this spring. The insurgents adapted swiftly by sending a continuous radio signal to the IED; when the signal stops or is jammed, the bomb explodes. The solution? Track the signal and make sure it continues. Problem: the signal is encrypted. Now the Americans are grappling with the task of cracking the encryption on the fly and mimicking it—so far, without success. Still, IED casualties have dropped, since U.S. troops can break the signal and trigger the device before a convoy passes. That's the good news. The bad news is what the new triggering system says about the insurgents' technical abilities.
(I found this via Bruce Schneir's security blog, which I highly recommend)
US helps Saddam build chem weapons of mass destruction
From a Washington Post story of Dec 30, 2002 by Michael Dobbs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions. […]
The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. […]
[By Nov 1983,] intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld. […]
Pulling out the Hitler comparisons
You know public discourse has reached the next level when the Hitler comparisons start flying. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show castigates Congress and others for their use of this metaphor.
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=15751
(There is a short commercial you have to watch, but it's worth it)
Brain-twisting English
This one is making the rounds again. These will make your brain
spin, even if you are a native/experienced English speaker.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the! invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail
After a number of injections my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Google Maps images plane in flight
Google Maps includes arial/satellite photography. Because GoogleMaps makes it so easy to scroll around, you can stumble across some interseting stuff.
I just stumbled across this plane in flight about to land at the airport in Boise, ID.
Turns out others have spotted airplanes in flight using Google Maps. The previous link is from http://www.googlesightseeing.com, a site dedicated to the cool things people find using Google Maps.
Mr. Cranky movie reviews
MrCranky.com has never reviewed a movie he likes. His rating scale from best to worst is
1 bomb = Almost tolerable
2 bombs = Consistently annoying
3 bombs = Will require therapy after viewing
4 bombs = As good as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick
Ka-BOOM! = So godawful that it ruptured the very fabric of space and time with the sheer overpowering force of its mediocrity.
Nuke = Proof that Jesus died in vain.
Here's some choice bits from his review of the lastest Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith (he gave it 3 bombs):
Ultimately, Anakin chooses the dark side because it has a better health care plan.
If George Lucas has a filmmaking philosophy, it goes something like this: drama + special effects = more drama. By this point in the series, however, audiences have pretty much seen it all, and the only way Lucas could get anyone's attention would be to crash the nitroglycerine planet directly into the enriched uranium planet.
To say that "Revenge of the Sith" is disappointing, given that some of us have invested almost 30 years of our lives in this franchise, is like saying that Catholics were a little sad when the Pope died.
World Wind — Interactive Earth viewer
Ok, so this is so freaking cool:
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
It's a 180 MB download, but man is it worth it. You get a globe that you can click-n-drag to rotate around, and can zoom in with your mouse wheel (or both-click). As you zoom in, you can tell World Wind to download high resolution satellite and arial imagery, all the way down to 1 meter per pixel for cities in the US.
You'll need a high-speed internet connection, and a recent computer (one purchased in the last couple of years).
I recommend this site to learn more about WorldWind
http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Main_Page
The "official" site is not very helpful.