Friday, October 31, 2008

Prop H8 is close, but there's bigger fish to fry.



Anybody notice that the trend lines on the proposition looks like a Jesus fish?

Freaky.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Interesting Math Questions

1) If 2 fish are recommended per ten gallons and a fish tank holds 35 gallons of water then how many fish could I have in the fish tank? I could have zero. I could have 35 gallons of fish. What does the recommendation have to do with anything. And why would I want to maximum number of fish? That's a stupid question.

2) According to the diagram the library wing 1 foot 10 inches by 2 feet 3 inches and is asking how large the dimensions of the new wing are if the length is 50 feet longer than the width? But, it already gave me the dimensions for the wing and it's not even large enough to stand in properly. Does the question want me to add 600 inches to one of the sides? But the question says the diagram of the wing is shown? That's a stupid question.

3) If you're a fish, and your computer is overclocked and you can make a model blush with a really tawdry joke... what was the height of the Titanic? According to Michael McGaughan (The Birth of the Titanic, page 46) the Titanic was 236 feet tall from keel to mast. If you wanted to build the model to scale you'd want to make it 2 feet 6 inches by 8.02 inches but the fact that you could build a non-scale model at 6 inches is as pointless as your computer being overclocked.

School kids are judged by how well they do on these questions. They are part of Holt Geometry questions. Really?

Monday, October 27, 2008

Sarah Palin Fighter of Her Own Campaign.

You should elect Sarah Palin President in 2012 because she's smart and sassy and knows what's up. During her 2008 vice presidential bid she was completely opposed to how the campaign was run. She actively bucked the mold and made smart calls as the McCain campaign was swirling down the drain. The only time McCain lead was just after picking Sarah Palin, and then she watched as they squandered that lead and ran it down to a overwhelming defeat 60/39 and a 60 senate majority for the democrats.

She spoke up when the campaign dwindled their states down, objecting to pulling out of Michigan, she objected to being sent to just the boonies to gather money, she objected to the way McCain's disastrous campaign was waged. That's why she's the best candidate to defeat Barack Obama in 2012.

-- Mostly in jest but there's a certain ring of truth to it. She has been getting kind of angry at the campaign and distancing herself from their decisions. She's mostly been kept hidden because every time she opens her mouth words come out in some random order and it embarrasses the campaign. But, she became governor by opposing some slight ethics infraction in her highly corrupt state then through a huffy-fit, resigned and ran for mayor... even doing that same ethics infraction herself. Don't be surprised at all when she runs in '12 on the claims that she was the only rising star on this sinking ship.

As all the reasonable people bailed out the Republican party for either the Dems or independents the primary season can only really be won by an ideologue.

Why gay marriage is constitutional.

The Loving v. Virgina case was settled on the grounds of equal rights by the 14th amendment. If I have a right everybody has the same right. I have the right to marry a white women, therefore everybody has the right. It does not suffice to suggest that everybody has the right to marry somebody of their own race. Likewise I have the right to marry a women, so everybody has the right to marry a woman. Thusly, even women have the right to marry women. Equal protection under the law legalizes gay marriage without needing to say anything about it being gay.

It is a restriction on my rights to say that my sister can do something that I cannot do. Although, I have no yen to marry men, it's a right and must be equally honored for all people. It isn't gay marriage which is being restricted by prohibitions against gay marriage. It's the rights of all individuals to marry those of the same sex... even though only gay people would care to do so.

When gay marriage is legalized by the supreme court, that'll be the logic behind it.

Update:
Adding Video, via Pandagon

Friday, October 24, 2008

The coolest thing I would never have thought of.

There are a massive list of things that I would never do. They typically fall into a hierarchy of different things.

Impossible things. - Create and destroy matter or energy.
Improbable things. - Win the lotto.
Impractical things. - Dedicate my life to reading every book I can.
Things beyond my ability - Run a three minute mile.
Things I never would think of doing - Escalator Spinning.

This is the coolest thing I would never have thought of.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

True Blood: Werewolf

I think Sam Merlotte on True Blood is a werewolf.

1) Picture of a dog saving a girl on his wall.
2) Called the dog, that always hangs out nearby, "brother".
3) Runs out during the full moon and gets seen running home naked.
4) Sookie can't quite hear his thoughts.

... yeah, kind of random but werewolf I says...
Okay please tell me I'm not the only one that sees that Sam is most likely a Werewolf. I mean the signs are everywhere. Because if I am everyone needs to pay more attention to the episodes and less to the hot guy characters. - suicidalbarbie08

California Propositions

Yes on 1a, 2, 3, 5, 12.
These are official SSnot endorsements.

1A High Speed Rail -- Trains might actually be kind of nice.

2 Farm Animal Conditions -- The standard claims of animal rights and from groups like PETA tend to try to exploit the desire for animal welfare with animal rights. While the former is a position everybody agrees with the latter is fairly silly. That said, this prop supports the former and suggests that farm animals shouldn't be forced into tiny boxes and never get to move around until they are killed for food.

3 Children's Hospital Bonds -- This sounds like something you'd call a proposition that creates death camps and forces people into slavery. Who would vote against Children's Hospitals? According to latest polling very few and according to the letter of the proposition it does what it says it does.

4 Parental Notification -- If a kid is under 18 and wants an abortion they gotta tell their parents. This is about as extreme as the pro-life people could get a bill in the state. The latest PPIC finally has it polling as a fail.

5 Drug Rehab Programs -- We love our drugs and our forced drug rehab rather than prisons.

6 Anti-Gang -- No, LOVE THE PRISONS INSTEAD!

7 Renewable Power Standard - Seems to force up the amount of renewable energy requrements at different levels but groups like the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists because they say it's really poorly written.

8 Anti-Marriage -- Removes the constitutional rights of certain individuals to enter into a private contract because we hate them. Thankfully the PPIC study finally has this polling at a loss. The No on 8 crew sucked. They were caught completely offguard by a large influx of Mormon money pushing for a yes vote. "Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that would end same-sex marriage in California, is losing among likely voters, 52 percent to 44 percent" -- After the silly laws against same sex marriage were overturned and the polling looked good then no so good and now good again.

9 Victim's Rights -- REALLY! LOVE YOURSELF SOME PRISONS!

10 Pickens Natural Gas -- Eh, no. Pickens doesn't seem like a bad guy from the commercials but screw giving him massive amounts of money. Sierra Club again against. I like my fighters for an energy secure future far from fossil fuels to not advocate switching to fossil fuels, especially one he has a massive stake in.

11 Redistricting -- Fair redistricting is a massive loss for the Democrats. If the dems can't draw the lines then a number of seats will be lost. I have nothing in principle against redistricting or against fair redistricting... but unless every state does it it's going to be a strong disadvantage to one party over another. Take the proportional delegate amendments that come up in California here and there, those serve only to make the Republicans win the presidency if they passed. BTW the PPIC polling says Obama is up by 23 points in California.

12 Veterans Bonds -- Much like the childrens hospital it's hard to vote against helping veterans.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Family Scrabble



Coistril keeps the 50 bonus points.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Mark Twain, naked people

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." - Mark Twain


As much as I'm a fan of Mark Twain, I daresay that quote has undue amounts of naivete.

Dug into the internet.

So my internet is down again. I'm slick enough to scratch some up by burrowing in through a PCIMCA card in the other room having turned off my DHCP server on my router rather than opting for the better choice involving forcing a VPN connection and opening wide the entire network. Still, it's been a bit better. Less jonesing this time. I might be able to survive in some kind of freak time warp... so long as diseases don't kill me.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Rainbows and Dust

Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.

by Langston Hughes


I'm a fan of Hughes' poems but this just seems completely confused. Rainbows are not effected by dust but rather water and the general diffusion of the atmosphere. You could have a dustless world with rainbows. There was once the belief that dust and water vapor in the air made the sky blue, although why it didn't change color during dry heats and wet heats never seemed to get addressed. It is actually because of the diffusion of the atmosphere itself (photons get pushed a bit by the EM of the atoms).

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Forced Birthing

Apparently the "health" of the mother is a reason for abortion but that clearly just lets the flood gates open. Anybody with a modicum of common sense would see that restricting abortion in cases where the health of the mother is concerned makes an absolutely massive impact on the ability of the government to control women's bodies. It's nothing more than a wedge issue to try to prevent the government from forcing women to engage in pregnancies that are unwanted and unsafe for them.

Kinda Awesome

Wind blew down my internet for a day.

I nearly went insane.

I think there is some issue with internet addiction, if being unconnected causes such utter turmoil. For example, a good solid 40% of my thoughts ended with "but I can't do that because I don't have internet." -- I don't think this is healthy. I pride myself on being ready if I ever fall into some kind of timewarp and being ready for transport into the past. I even kind-of-sort-of want a smallpox vaccine just so that I'd be safe from the disease without needing to find a dairy maid with cow pox. However, if transported into the past, I'd go crazy without internet then I certainly don't want to fall into a scientifically impossible reordering of the universe.

I am unprepared for this course of (impossible) events.

I probably couldn't even manage to live through 1998 internet. What good are secret keywords (they've been the same for a decade or so now/no I'll never tell you them), that only I know so that I can identify time-travelers from the future, (including myself) if timetraveling leads to saninternetsanity?

Sure, I never bother to prepare for depression era financial collapse or post-peak breakdown of a world unable to dig energy out of the ground, or even a global warming run away world where climate change kicks off a chain reaction of accelerated heating and leads to a post apocalyptic world of subterranean existence as actual and real possibilities... but time travel? I thought I was prepared for and it seems that I would be utterly time-shocked.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Pointing fingers.

I personally blame the entire financial crisis, which has demolished stock prices and allowed to Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop as low as 7882.51 in trading on Friday, on people getting subprime mortgages. That's right largely-minority-families-given-house-loans-at-prices-you-could-barely-afford-and-then-couldn't-when-the-rates-got-jacked-a-bit-higher: it's all your fault! You people destroyed the entire world's economy. I hope your happy. Damn minorities! You sell them a house and they topple the entire capitalistic system.

It's as if they didn't know or care that the entire liquidity of the market was based on very small amounts of real capital to make and claim exorbitant amounts of debt to be traded and dispersed and borrowed against repeatedly and that real capital was mostly their 400k mortgages on their 200k houses! Shame on you. Shame!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Limbo: 8579 DOW

http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/dow/

The first time in five years the DOW closed below 9,000 points. How low can it go? Well, we'll see in short order. But don't worry the fundamentals of the economy are strong. If you have stocks I recommend switching to Cocacola, Campbell soup company, McDonalds, and pretty much anything that sells really cheap food. But only after it stops losing record amounts every day. Welcome to Black October. When the stock market collapsed and Obama pretty much was guaranteed his election.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Monday, October 6, 2008

The BBC stole an hour: The Shroud of Turin

So I am apparently retarded. I watched something called the Shroud of Turin which was get this, about the Shroud of Turin and completely bogus nonsense.

The argument went like this,

The Shroud of Turin carbon dates to the 1320s. The Shroud of Turin was first seen around the 1360s. However, there were other fake shrouds which purported to be the burial cloths of Christ which dated back to the 11th century. So the Shroud of Turin dates back to the 11th century. There's also some hood thing which dates back to the 5th century so clearly the Shroud dates back to the fifth century (because both of them have blood) that look nothing alike in pattern (it seriously overlays them and they look nothing alike). And therefore the Shroud of Turin is 5th century. However, we also know that the Gospels say Jesus was crucified and we have this cloth and so this cloth clearly dates back to the first century.

There! Amazing! Now why is it that this cloth only carbon dates to the 14th century when it first appeared and the local church leader actually tracked down the forger and thought people were really stupid for wanting to worship another idol? When the clear and obvious historical evidence suggests through thinly-veiled innuendo that this is totally the burial cloth of Christ. The carbon 14 dating must be wrong! Perhaps some carbon-14 mixed into the linen via carbon monoxide. *tests* -- Nope that doesn't work at all. Still, it's a mystery!

I am utterly astounded at how many hoaxes people buy into lock stock and barrel (I'm sure there's a holy barrel of fatima or something) simply on the grounds of religion. Certainly there couldn't have been multiple hoaxes throughout history and all share the same general theme which was a part of the artwork themes as well. How could you ever create such an forgery anyhow!

In the end, I lost an hour of my time watching that crap and asking myself WTF at different points. It even goes on to claim that on any other endeavor such great evidence as this would totally be examined, and went back over the list of things which were so exceedingly weak that I didn't think they even had the balls to count as supposed evidence. I'm pissed. I lost an hour of my time with that crap.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Vice Presidental Debate: Palin wins.

She answered every question. Her answers had no relation to the questions in question. Expecting otherwise would be expecting too much. And she didn't light the stage on fire. That's a win.