Friday, February 26, 2010

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

This image was generated by NASA via http://su...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.




Today’s news and commentary:
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
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Beware of word clouds

Greetings.

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

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Gregorian Calendar Day.

Today’s news and commentary:
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
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Beware of rapid Rubik’s Cube-solving robots

Polar Ice Cap on Mars, seen by the Hubble Tele...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:
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
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Sunday, February 21, 2010

Beware of role playing games of the future

Al Franken, Senator from MinnesotaImage 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:
Today’s weird thing is “Is Your Life Just One Big RPG? -- Mind-Blowing Speech From DICE 2010”.


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
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Friday, February 19, 2010

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

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Beware of people singing in post-apocalyptic war zones

Greenhouse Gas Concentration Stabilization Lev...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:
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
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

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

Absorption lines in the optical spectrum of a ...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:
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
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

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:
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
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Monday, February 15, 2010

Beware of mathematical porn

Greetings.

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

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


Today’s news and commentary:
Mandelbrot setImage 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



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Friday, February 12, 2010

Beware of 40 birds and an electric guitar

2005 Gibson '58 Reissue Les Paul in Iced Tea i...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 DayLincoln’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:
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
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

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:
Today’s weird thing is “How a Government Gets a Job Done”:
funny graphs and charts
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
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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Beware of engraved iPods

The Senate as a Court of Impeachment for the T...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:
Today’s weird thing is “Apple iPod Engravings » iPod Engraving Photos”.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron
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Monday, February 8, 2010

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:
Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is “Darth Pennington?”:
the death star
Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Friday, February 5, 2010

Beware of jury duty

Greetings.
NASA composite satellite photoImage 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
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Thursday, February 4, 2010

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:
Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding ...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
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010

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:
Mac OS X Snow LeopardImage 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
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Monday, February 1, 2010

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:
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
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