Beware of Blinky

Greetings.

Jewish date:  18 Siwan 5770 (Parashath Shelaḥ).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Memorial Day (USA), What You Think Upon Grows Day, World No Tobacco Day, Speak in Complete Sentences Day.

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing, continuing the Pac-Man theme, is “Pacman at UNC”, which explores the idea of live-action Pac-Man.  Sorry, no embedding.  I blame Blinky.

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde

Image of the infamous 256th level bug in the original Pac-Man via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  12 Siwan 5770 (Parashath BeHa‘alothekha).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Towel Day, Nerd Pride Day, Star Wars Day, African Liberation Day, National Tap Dance Day, International Missing Children’s Day.

Today’s weird thing is Google Pac-Man, Google’s tribute to the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man in the form of a fully-playable version of the game with the maze shaped like the Google logo.  Google Pac-Man reportedly wasted 4,820,000 person-hours when it was launched on Friday.  That is how addictive this game/logo is.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

☠☡☢☣⚠⚡☹

Greetings.

Jewish date:  11 Siwan 5770 (Parashath BeHa‘alothekha).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Brother’s Day, Victoria Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “ColorOfChange.org:  Tell Fox: "Fire John Stossel"”, “Blackwater is just the tip of the iceberg”, “Stop the Comcast-NBC Merger | Free Press”, “Stop The Drill | Oceana North America”, “American Insurance Companies: Stop Canceling Women's Policies - Take Action Today @ The Breast Cancer Site”, “Save Gulf Sea Turtles - Take Action Today @ The Rainforest Site”, “action.firedoglake.com | Sign the petition to President Obama: End plans for offshore drilling”, “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  NO BAILOUT FOR BP”, and “MoveOn.org Political Action: No Bailouts for Big Oil”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “From bad to worse: Hard-luck planet gradually being devoured by its host star”
• “How Many Cancers Are Caused by the Environment?”
• “It's Not Just You: Hearing Half a Phone Call Is Annoying”
• “Crystal iPhone dock will help rid you of your excess cash”:  I just post stuff like this.  I do not explain them.
• “Alcohol and Pregnancy”
• “Securing your Facebook privacy settings”

Image of the flag of Esperanto, which is a zillion times better than iConji via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is “New iConji language for the symbol-minded” and the actual site of this new language, iConji. Connecting the world.  The idea behind iConji is something in the way of a universal icon-based language for text messages.  The problem with it is—and I say this with all the emphasis it deserves—WE DO NOT NEED YET ANOTHER UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.  There have been a host of would-be international, artificial languages, and so far the only one with a decent number of speakers is Esperanto—and Esperanto speakers are rare.  iConji has two huge problems:  small vocabulary (1,100 word-symbols) and no grammar.  The creators intend for people to contribute to the vocabulary, but the site does not seem to give even the barest outline of an iConji grammar.  For all its faults, Esperanto is starting to look great by comparison.  Furthermore, the very fact that iConji has so many symbols is going to make typing a big pain.  I think I will stick to English for international communications for the moment; in many respects it is a terrible language, but at least you can type it and find a lot of people who speak it.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of ridiculously ostenatious iPads

Image in lieu of a picture of an iPad via Wikipedia because Zemata refused to give me something I considered acceptable; this is Mary McLeod Bethune, FYI

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 Siwan 5770 (Parashath Naso’).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Mary McLeod Bethune Week, International Museum Day, Visit Your Relatives Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Friends of the Earth U.S.:  Say 'No!' to Offsets, 'Yes!' to Real Climate Solutions”, “Repower America | Tell Your Senators: Time to act!”, “An inconvenient truth about the climate bill”, and “Help Wild Tigers Survive - The Petition Site”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Stanford’s Robot Car Slides into Parking Spot Like a Badass (video)”
• “Harvard Starts Heart Outside Body, Preserves Organs for 10 Days”
• “British Medical Association: homeopathy is witchcraft | Bad Astronomy”
• “Texas congressman uses porn to kill science funding”
• “Why I Steal Movies… Even Ones I'm In”
• “Neanderthals not the only apes humans bred with”
• “Fat lips evolve at record speed”
• “"Google Flu Trends" Found to Be Nearly on Par with CDC Surveillance Data”
• “Baby Coral Home In by Sound”
• “Passwords, scams, and you”

Today’s weird thing is “Solid gold, diamond-encrusted iPad for the truly 'elite'”, which seems to your humble blogger to be ridiculously ostentatious and more likely to make the owner look like an idiot than impress people.  Enjoy (or mock), share the weirdness, and ḥagh sameaḥ.

Aaron

The hazards of laser pointers

Greetings.

Jewish date:  29 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Support Clean Energy Jobs - Take Action Today @ The Hunger Site”, “End the Pet Primate Trade - The Petition Site” and “Take Action: Tell Obama to stand up to Big Oil!”

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Why do we focus on the least important causes of cancer?”
• “Where Do Old Appliances Go after They Die?”
• “Weird wonders lived past the Cambrian”

Today’s weird thing is “Laser Pointer”:

Enjoy, share the weirdness, and, please, don’t tease your cat.

Aaron

Beware of retro telephone handsets

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  National Lab Day, International Nurses Day, National Third Shift Workers Day/National Nightshift Workers Day, and (inexplicably) Limerick Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “ONE | Fix This Budget”, “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.:  Tell our Senators to get moving on Child Nutrition”, “Congress is 0 for 9 - The Petition Site”, “Take Action: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing | Save Darfur” and “Save BioGems: Take Action: Save Yellowstone/Greater Rockies”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Jupiter Loses A Stripe”
• “Not So Conservative When It Comes to Saving Energy”
• “National Lab Day Seeks to Leverage Hands-on Learning to Broaden Science's Appeal”
• “Working overtime: Good for the wallet, but bad for the heart”
• “"Murdered" Chinese man reappears after 10 years”:  Yes, people, torture does not produce reliable information; threaten or inflict enough pain on someone, and you can expect him/her to say whatever he/she thinks you want to hear that will make the pain stop, even if it bears little resemblance to the truth.

Today’s weird thing is the ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset.  This should be useful for those wanting classic telephone style or interested in confusing others.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of whatevers

Greetings.

Jewish date:  27 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Eat What You Want Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “CARE : Defending Dignity - Fighting Poverty :  International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act”, “Stop Terrorists from Buying Guns and Explosives - The Petition Site”, “Friends of the Earth U.S.:  Tell President Obama to Support a Financial Speculation Tax”, “Save BioGems: Take Action: Stop the Pebble Mine”, “Ban New Offshore Drilling - The Petition Site”, “Working Families » Take Action!:  Sign the petition to Albany”, “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  Mr. President, THIS is why drilling is bad.”, “Empowering Women Can Save Children - The Petition Site”, and “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.:  Ask Your Legislator to Override the Veto!”

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Comprehensive study of 'time twins' debunks astrology”:  Completely unsurprising.
• “World's Biggest Beaver Dam Visible From Space”
• “U.S. Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds”:  Yes, evolution is at work here.
• “A Single Molecule Computes Thousands of Times Faster than Your PC”
• “Unconventional thinkers or recklessly dangerous minds?”:  About AIDS denialism and the question of how to deal with it.  This is not a trivial issue since AIDS kills people.
• “Robots With Knives: A Study of Soft-Tissue Injury in Robotics”

Today’s weird thing is “grand lunar after ur tang”:

Enjoy, share the weirdness, and keep that whatever away from your Tang.

Aaron

Beware of time travel in this or any other timeline

Greetings.

Jewish date:  23 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeHar-BeḤuqqothay).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  No Pants Day (with no clue why this is worth celebrating), International Tuba Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Take Action: Support Faster FOIA”, “Take Action: Benchmarks Report Card | Save Darfur”, and “Save BioGems: Take Action: Say No to New Offshore Drilling”.

Questionably worthy cause of the day:  “The Time Traveler Convention - May 7, 2005”.  Pass on to future generations that when time travel becomes possible, they should attend.  Or in the meantime, just read the disturbing report of what happened there, “Grandfather Paradox”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Neandertal Genome Study Reveals That We Have a Little Caveman in Us”:  Unsurprising.
• “Seven more Dictionary tips”
• “Silicone Tally: How Hazardous Is the New Post-Teflon Rubberized Cookware”

Today’s weird thing is “A Guide to SF Chronophysics”, which contains more information on time travel in science-fiction than most people probably realizes exists.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Beware of Spider-Man

Image which Zemata decided was relevant for absolutely no good reason via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  22 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeHar-BeḤuqqothay).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  No Diet Day, Nurses’ Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Sign the Petition | Terror Gap” and “Samsung: Come Clean About the Hazards in Your Workplace - The Petition Site”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “General election 2010: Information is Beautiful goes poll dancing”:  Polls can be substantially inaccurate, especially long before elections.  Never forget “Dewey Defeats Truman”!
• “A thousand trillion suns”:  The message:  awe and humility.
• “In Deep Water: Can we afford to spill any oil?”
• “Deniers abuse power to attack climate scientists”
• “Top 10 things Hollywood thinks computers can do”

Today’s weird thing is “Spider-Man foils comic book thief in Australia”.  The title does not quite mean what it sounds like, but the incident is rather amusing.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and thank your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Aaron

Beware of the government

Greetings.

Jewish date:  20 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath Behar-Beḥuqqothay).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  International Respect for Chickens Day, Kite Day, International Firefighters’ Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Save BioGems: Take Action: Put an End to Commercial Whaling”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Mosquitoes inherit DEET resistance”

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is “Politics Explained”.  This is a humorous look at politics, in terms of a farmer who has two cows, which has been wandering the Internet for years and being modified.  The version I saw before this one was even more cruel.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and keep the government away from your cows.

Aaron

Beware of derivative markets

Greetings.

Jewish date:   19 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath Behar-Beḥuqqothay).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  World Press Freedom Day (UN), National Two Different Colored Shoes Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Don't let the climate deniers drown out science”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Evidence based smear campaigns”:  Very depressing.
  
• “Just Deserts”
  
• “The Vaccine War” and commentary on it
  
• “Aphids Pilfered Red Genes from Fungus”:  I did not make this up.  Reality is bizarre at times.

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Harold is “Easily Understood Explanation of Derivative Markets (In plain language, even a drunk can understand)”.  This should help everyone understand what went horribly wrong.

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron