We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your musical distinctiveness will be added to our own.

Image which Zemata thought was relevant for some reason via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  12 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Teṣawweh).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  National Pistachio Day, For Pete’s Sake Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Save BioGems: Take Action: Whales in Danger”, “Take Action: Tell Royal Bank of Canada's CEO to Stop Financing the Tar Sands”, and “Take Action: Break Up Insurance Monopolies”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Forget x-ray vision, these fish have UV vision”
  
• “Space Junk Mess Getting Messier in Orbit”
  
• “It's in the Details: For Ecofriendly Auto Detailing, Do-It-Yourself Is the Only Way to Go”
  
• “Element 112 joins the periodic table”
• “Planet Unwinds in 'Death March'”
  
• “Tribes show best camels at beauty pageant”:  I was not aware anyone considered camels beautiful.

Today’s weird thing is “Triumph of the Cyborg Composer”, which deals with artificial creativity and many people’s resistance to the idea.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, Shabbath shalom, and happy Purim.

Aaron

Beware of word clouds

Greetings.

Jewish date:  10 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Teṣawweh).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Gregorian Calendar Day.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Avoiding a Digital Dark Age”

Today’s weird thing is Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds, which describes itself thusly:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

This is the image I got from feeding this blog into Wordle:

Enjoy (or be confused or something) and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of rapid Rubik’s Cube-solving robots

Image of the wrong polar ice cap, suggested by Zemata, via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  9 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Teṣawweh).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  National Dog Biscuit Day, Curling Is Cool Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Demerit Walmart”, “We'd rather have a good bill than a bipartisan one.”, “DemocracyForAmerica.com » Good Policy not Bipartisan Junk”, and “Americans want a good bill -- not just bipartisanship | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”.  (Do you get the impression that multiple organizations are mad about the exact same thing?)

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Can You Learn Physics from a Comic Book?”:  Interesting tactic to get people to learn.
  
• “Two hospital-acquired infections estimated to have killed 48,000, cost $8.1B in 2006”:  If you must go to the hospital, feel free to annoy all staff into holding to higher hygiene standards.
  
• “When Sea Levels Attack”:  Behind this awesome title is the very real concern of what happens if the polar ice caps melt.  The results are anything but cool.
  
• “New travel agency offers the bear necessities”:  Yes, now your teddy bear can be pampered.  Somehow I am now expecting a service to pamper one’s imaginary friend…
  
• “Discovery Dates Seafaring 100,000-Plus Years Ago”
  
• “Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?”:  Welcome to my life, folks.
  
• “Same Species, Polar Opposites: The Mystery of Identical Creatures Found in both Arctic and Antarctic Waters”

Today’s weird thing is “LEGO Robot Solves Any Rubik’s Cube In Less Than 12 Seconds (Video)”.  Intuition suggests that the reason such a robot even exists is the major reason people try to solve Rubik’s Cube:  it is a problem to be solved.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of role playing games of the future

Image which Zemata thought was relevant for no apparent reason via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  7 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Teṣawweh).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  International Mother Language Day (UN).

NOTE:  In celebration of today’s quasi-holiday, this blog will be in my mother language:  English.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Tell Obama Not to Abandon the Employee Free Choice Act!”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Free IHOP Pancakes on National Pancake Day”:  This may be of interest to our non-Jewish readers.
  
• “You can’t resolve away climate change”:  The absurdity of the Utah legislators passing a resolution against global warming has spread to South Dakota.  Major rule:  physical reality is what it is, no matter what governments or anyone else want it to be.  People who do not understand this are too dangerous to put in office, since they will work against solving real problems whenever these problems clash with their preconceptions.  I therefore strongly recommend voting against everyone who denies reality.
  
• “Life-like evolution in a test tube”:  Did anyone really not expect this to happen eventually?
  
• “Rom Houben: Not communicating through facilitated communication”
  
• “Beyond the sugar pill: Are doctors misusing the placebo effect?”
  
• “Untreated vision problems linked to dementia in the elderly”
  
• “Cat food latest weapon against Australia's cane toads”:  I cannot make something like this up.

Today’s weird thing is “Is Your Life Just One Big RPG? -- Mind-Blowing Speech From DICE 2010”.

Wii Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

Like all nontrivial predictions of the future, do not expect things to actually turn out this way.  Though certainly parts of it are a distinct, scary possibility.   Enjoy (or be scared or something) and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of omitted punctuation

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Copernicus Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Dick Cheney confessed to a war crime. Prosecute him.”

Today’s weird thing is “No Price Too High”, a legend which describes the perils of omitting crucial punctuation.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Beware of people singing in post-apocalyptic war zones

Image via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  4 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, National Battery Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “DemocracyForAmerica.com » Become a Citizen Co-Sponsor” (on health reform).

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Utah delivers vote of no confidence for 'climate alarmists'”:  OK… Ask yourself who is more likely to be right about global warming:  people who are experts on climatology and have spent their lives studying the situation, or a bunch of people who most likely have no training in climatology whatsoever?  Mike Noel’s claim that “environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion” is especially revealing of the ill-informed, delusional nature of these politicians.  I wish that every single politician who voted for this a decisive defeat in the next election.
  
• “Chronic health conditions in children are on the rise”
  
• “Our New Solar System: Fresh Views of Planets and Moons”
  
• “Using Lasers to Zap Mosquitoes”:  No, I am not making this up.  And it is not overkill.
  
• “Shot in the Arm: Has the U.S. Invested Enough Stimulus Money in Prevention?”
  
• “The dark side of geo: PleaseRobMe.com”
  
• “Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you”
  
• “iPhone Owners Smashing Device to Get Upgrade”:  This is a strange tribute to the sturdiness of the iPhone.  Apparently they are very difficult to damage.

Today’s weird thing is “"I'll Be Back" Terminator Monster Ballad”.

This is probably the best thing which has ever come out of the Terminator franchise.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Use chocolate to measure the speed of light (not a joke)

Image which Zemata thought was relevant for no good reason via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  3 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  My Way Day, Champion Crab Races Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.”

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Six unexpected uses for tooltips”

Today’s weird thing is “Leftover Valentine’s Chocolate? Use It to Measure the Speed of Light”.  (No, I am not making this up.  Really.)  The only problem with this is that chocolate has such a short half-life that one is unlikely to find leftovers.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.  And someone please send me some chocolate…

Aaron

Beware of Flu Kitteh, a Wii laptop, and clouds of authors

Greetings.

Jewish date:  2 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Worthy cause of the day:  “MoveOn.org Political Action: Toyota: Stop lobbying against car safety”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Cosmic Winter Olympics: Moon Skiing and Mars Skating”
  
• “Washington to Give Microsoft a $100 Million Annual Tax Cut...and Possible Amnesty on Past Tax Evasion - Microsoft Tax Dodge”:  What the gezornenblat are these people thinking?
  
• “Motivating Question: When an Elephant Charges, Is It Walking or Running?”
  
• “Flu Kitteh is in your haus”:
  
  This is an interesting way to make a public service announcement.  (And do beware of sharing germs, even with cats.)
  
• “OPB's wii laptop !!”:
  
  I have no idea why anyone made a laptop out of a Wii.

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is Literature-Map - The tourist map of literature.  Feed it the name of an author, and it will create a “cloud” of the names of other authors whose works fans of the first author are supposedly likely to enjoy.  Note that some of the clouds may come out a bit strange.  E.g., that for L. Frank Baum (famous for his Oz books) contains Anton LaVey and Blanche Barton (of LaVeyan Satanism infamy), Aleister Crowley (of Thelema infamy), and H. P. Lovecraft (infamous for writing horror stories that I never found particularly scary).   Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of mathematical porn

Greetings.

Jewish date:  1 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Presidents Day.  (Or is it?  See “Presidents Day”.)

Worthy causes of the day:  “Tell President Obama to Stop Big Oil's Race to Ruin in the Tar Sands”, “Save BioGems: Take Action: Save Yellowstone/Greater Rockies”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: Demand an explanation from Anthem Blue Cross”, “Stop Corporate-Sponsored Wolf Slaughters - The Petition Site”, and “Support Malaria Vaccination Research - The Petition Site”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Scientist aims to break squid record”
  
• “Health Insurers Post Record Profits:  Insurance Firms Rake in Profits as They Cut Patients, Advocacy Group Says”:  Oops.
• “How do coronary stents work?”
  
• “Is Ethanol from Corn Bad for the Climate?”
  
• “New black hole simulator uses real star data”
  
• “Toner-, ink- and paperless printer (video)”
  

Image of the Mandelbrot set via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is “Mandelbrot Fractal Set Trip To e214 HD”.  (I wish I could embed this video, but Vimeo seems to have other ideas, so please click on the link.)  In this video we see the famous Mandelbrot set, over 9 minutes 54 seconds zoomed in to a magnification of 10²¹⁴, showing off its self-similar fractal nature to an extent that boggles the mind.  The creator describes this stunt as “Mathematical Porn”, and I think there may be a grain of truth in this unsavory description.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of 40 birds and an electric guitar

Image of something you may want to keep birds away from via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Darwin Day, Lincoln’s Birthday.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Save Martin Grossman - The Petition Site” and “Keep Children Safe: Train Child Care Workers - The Petition Site”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Long-Locked Genome of Ancient Man Sequenced”
  
• “Chocolate Chips Away at Stroke Risk”
  
• “U.S. would reap billions from $1 cigarette tax hike”
  
• “No joke: South Carolina now requires ’subversives’ to register”
  
• “Unclutter your hard drive”

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is “Gomp/arts: 40 wild birds play a Gibson Les Paul guitar”.  Arguably this should be abuse of a musical instrument, but the result is better than I expected.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Beware of governments

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Umbrella Day, Plimsoll Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Urgent Request”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Energy Storage on Ice”
  
• “Haitian Apocalypse and a Bold New World”
  
• “Unearthing Anthrax's Dirty Secret: Its Mysterious Survival Skills May Rely on Help from Viruses--and Earthworms”

Today’s weird thing is “How a Government Gets a Job Done”:

I am not clear this is 100% accurate, but it certainly seems like it most of the time since governments are infamous for incompetence and stupidity.  If anyone has a country whose government actually works decently, please let me know.  I sure everyone on the planet would like to know.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of engraved iPods

Image which Zemata thought was relevant for no apparent reason via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  25 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Toothache Day (probably a good time to reflect on dental hygiene).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.:  Alert Letter:  Let the Senate Rules Committee Know it's Time to Pass the Cigarette Tax”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: Tell Congress: Stand with Melanie”, and “Take Action: Help Protect New Mexico's Paleozoic Treasures”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “City Dwellers Drive Deforestation in 21st Century”
  
• “Third-hand smoke contains carcinogens too, study says”:  Yes, the bad news from smoking always gets worse and worse.

Today’s weird thing is “Apple iPod Engravings » iPod Engraving Photos”.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of extreme home makeovers

Greetings.

Jewish date:  24 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Kite Flying Day.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “How Toads Conquered the World”:  Great title, but not quite what it sounds like.

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is “Darth Pennington?”:

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of tax forms

Greetings.

Jewish date:  23 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Charles Dickens Day, Wave All Your Fingers At Your Neighbors Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Time to shame Sen. Shelby”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• Images of Pluto via Wikipedia
  “Winter Forecast: Art to Blanket Region”
  
• “Brain scan allows unconscious patient to communicate”
  
• “Ancient dialect extinct after last speaker dies”
  
• “With a little help, water can freeze as it heats up”
  
• “Prehistoric patterns: A dinosaur gets color from head to feathery tail”
  
• “Hubble catches Pluto red-faced”
  
• “USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends”
  
• “JSUR? Yes, sir.”
  
• “Ancient East Asian Found in Roman Empire”
  
• “Ghostbusters: Authors of a new study propose a strict ban on medical ghostwriting”
  

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry and Nancy, is “Tax Advice Fail”:



Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of jury duty

Greetings.

Image Zemata thought was relevant via Wikipedia

Jewish date:  21 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Yithro).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  National Wear Red Day, Weatherman’s Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Coal Ash is Hazardous Waste and Must Be Regulated Now - The Petition Site”, “CARE : Defending Dignity - Fighting Poverty :  Ask Congress to Help Haiti”, “Tell China: Free Tibetan Filmmaker - The Petition Site”, and “Save BioGems: Take Action: Save Wolves
 Under Siege”.

Today’s weird thing is “Kitteh Called to Jury Duty”:

Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Express your love with germs!

Greetings.
Jewish date:  20 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Yithro).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  International Dadaism Month, World Cancer Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Take Action | Oceana North America:  Tell President Obama: No More Offshore Oil Drilling!”, “Save BioGems: Take Action: Protect Grizzly Bears”, “Include Children in HIV Vaccine Research - The Petition Site”, and “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  Fix the Budget, Fix America”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “How To Hide An Airplane Factory”:  (Submitted by Barry.)  It is amazing what one can do with camouflage.
  
• “Troubleshoot your DNS”
  
• “Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision!”
  
• “Bees Can Recognize Human Faces”:  Who knew?
  
• “NASA has tons of cool space technologies that may never get to space”

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is “Valentine's Day Box of Mini Plush Microbes”, the perfect gift for the microbiologist or immunologist you love dearly.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of ridiculous installation stunts

Greetings.

Jewish date:  19 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Yithro).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  National Girls and Women In Sports Day, National Carrot Day.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Branding ban on cigarette packs?”:  Interesting method of cutting smoking.  Though I would still prefer a planetary ban on tobacco.
  
• “Students failing because of Twitter, texting”:  Scary, isn’t it?
  
• “The General Medical Council to Andrew Wakefield: “The panel is satisfied that your conduct was irresponsible and dishonest””:  For those who have not heard yet, the man responsible for starting vaccine paranoia is in really big trouble for being “dishonest” and “irresponsible”.  My best wishes for him are that he spend he rest of his life trying to repent for causing a number of epidemics, complete with needless pain, suffering, and death.

Image of what I want to see running on a tablet and will harp about as much as I feel like until I get it via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is “Mac OS X 10.3 Installed On Nokia N900 Because It’s Possible”.  (Yes, Apple, one can make even a tiny Mac OS X device.  Now get me that Mac OS X tablet I want before you make me sad.)  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of germs

Greetings.

Jewish date:  17 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Yithro).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Robinson Crusoe Day, Hula in the Coola Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Oppose the Murkowski Attack on the Clean Air Act - The Petition Site”.  Also, I donated platelets yesterday.  Please consider donating blood or blood components yourself if you can and save some lives.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “The Scale of the Universe”:  This should give a good sense of perspective.
  
• “Rotting Fish Spoil Ideas about Early Life-Forms' Simplicity”:  I really do not make stuff like this up.
  
• “Researchers use infrared cameras to determine taste quality of Japanese beef”:  Nor stuff like this.
  
• “Asexual Solution to a Parasite Problem”
  
• “Chemical Exposure Linked to Attention Deficit Disorder in Children”
• “Astronomers discover coolest sub-stellar body outside our solar system”
  

Today’s weird thing was created by Barry:

Remember what happened in The War of the Worlds.  And it happens in real life, too.  So don’t make the mistake of the Martians, but make sure you get vaccinated against preventable diseases.

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron