Ray Bradbury, Awesome²

The video F*ck Me Ray Bradbury is awesome. But, what is awesome²? Is it knowing that holding alt and typing 0-1-7-8 makes a ² symbol? No, it's Ray Bradbury watching F*ck Me Ray Bradbury:

Today is his birthday. August 22nd.

Tat's Trivia Bot, v 3.6

Tat's Trivia Bot 3.7

Update: Latest Tat's Trivia Bot 3.69

See latest blog and version 3.61

See Tat's Trivia Bot, 3.65Though, I'm mostly out of the scripting game. I did half a decade ago, make one of the foremost trivia scripts ever, with more features than anything else anybody else could dream of. So, it's still pretty much top of the market, in a niche and aging market, but with advances in mIRC occasionally things break as some backwards compatibility breaks down. So I dusted off the old skills and found what changed and de-broke it.

Tat's Trivia Bot v.3.6

Well, it turns out the functionality between mIRC 6.35 and mIRC 7.1 has a noted difference in $read. If you call $read on a non-existent file, it will hit an error message and stop processing. Before it would continue but return $null to the $read. So $read($trivfil), then checking if there was anything there, caused it to crash correct answers in 7.1, because it wouldn't go beyond $read. So I searched the file and made sure to add a check to all the $read commands to see if the file exists before trying to read from it.

Previous blog notes about the script are good. Also, I use to own Tatarize.com which is worth noting for the sake of people googling me. And I do have an outpost at tatarize.nfshost.com. And the Mediafire host has question files etc that are worth looking at. If you want to get in touch. I have a yahoo.com mail account and Tatarize has always been my name for pretty much everything, so if you do a little math you can figure my email (not explicitly said for the sake of spam).

This is either one of the most brilliant things I've ever said, or unintelligible.

With regard to Christians and the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Christians were part of the fall, not the cause of the fall. Dictatorships work well when there's a good dictator. And not all of the Roman Emperors were terrible. They could have kept on keeping on, had they not torn themselves apart. The downhill slide began far earlier than the Holy Roman Empire. And the rise of the Christians were, in part, a step along the slide that helped to ram things into the ground, but certainly they didn't cause the fall. They were simply offered the fruit, with several bites already taken out of it, and helped Rome, like the serpent, bite the dust.

The last line "... helped Rome, like the serpent, bite the dust." is clever as hell. Though it requires knowing that in Genesis the serpent is punished by being forced to move on its belly and eat dust. The tangled sort of metaphor may simply be brilliant using Genesis' Fall of Man as a metaphor to the Fall of the Roman Empire. And the comparisons of Adam being offered fruit that was already eaten a bit, with the Christians taking over an empire already in shambles and just making it a bit worse. The whole post might be worth reading, but that end part is just clever.

F*ck Me Ray Bradbury

(via Pharyngula)

That is fricking catchy.

Tweet: The Bible to Christians

http://www.cynical-c.com/?p=18818

To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree".

Fun Proof of the Day.

People say that when you see an image it's displayed upside down and your brain flips it to be right side up. Well, it turns out that this little factoid can actually matter. Get a flashlight (torch) with a pretty good amount of light output and place it on your forehead. Close your eyes if need be. You'll see a bright red glow coming from what looks like down to you. Because you are getting light to your eyes that doesn't go through your lenses. The reason it looks like it's down, is because it's really up and you're use to everything being flipped.

According to my work, I have 15 days to live.

Your personnel record contains the following date(s) that require your attention:
Tuberculosis Expiration Date Monday August 30, 2010 - Expires

Yes, I'm set to expire on the 30th, and of Tuberculosis. That's odd. An expiration due to TB. And I can't believe I once mocked that disease because it killed so few people.

Music Videos for the Deaf.

Well that's a clever idea, also awesome.

WOW! Futurama For the WIN!

Seriously, you need to find, watch, have, and know the latest episode 609. It's just fantastic.It's about evolution and creationism and holy crap is it good... for about the first ten minutes.

From the flying spaghetti monster appearing and talking, the whole missing links giant line, and several other bits are to be quite likeable. Overall the message gets tweaked to the point where it's stupidish. I'm sure there was a better episode that they got talked out of making.

The parallel structure and suggestion of tiny nanobots to start life off and then it evolving from there is a bit stupid when you look at the science behind abiogenesis (there's no first sort of nanobot). The structures and forms of evolution just take normal meat and fat form, which is a little silly. And then the complete ignoring of how exactly evolution actually works is pretty bad. But, for the first ten minutes it's the greatest episode. Well, last weeks episode was pretty fricking awesome too.

Rape Victims and Lie Detectors.

As a fun quip about sexual assaults and lie detectors in principle about the accusations against Al Gore (I'm a big fan by the way) there was the claim made that the individual who made the accusation failed a lie detector test several times. To which a friend noted that they can't be wrong (lie detectors are notoriously terrible and complete bunk) and I added:

Yeah, Maggie. I mean how is a device that measures your heart rate, breath rate and sweat rate and determines you're lying by the fact that you start sweating, breathing harder, and have your heart rate increase going to be fooled into thinking a woman is lying when she's talking about a time when she was sexually assaulted. I mean, she's clearly lying if she can't talk about her sexual assault without being cool as a cucumber.

And, now I'm actually kind of worried. How often are these machines employed to figure out of a woman was raped or not? Because, frankly I don't see how any rape victim could pass accordingly. Is it actually common? And if so, how terrible is that! Lie detectors try to show you're lying by picking up signs that you're nervous at some particular point. Well what if you have a good reason to be nervous, isn't that going to be called a lie?   --- Apparently it's very common and often a prerequisite for beginning an investigation.

Firefly Dr. Horrible Parody

He actually has several songs. Reavers is pretty good too. And the parody of One The Rise would be better if the sound were better and the singing.

Mocking Talking To God.

Apparently if God tells you things, you should never ever tell anybody about it and you should employ your rational mind before acting on God's advice. WTF? Why wouldn't you do what God said to do, without question? I mean I understand the practical implications in that there is no God and anybody who thinks God is talking to them is crazy and they really need to be careful acting upon voices in their head. But, what kind of religious authorities go around telling people to ignore the all-powerful creator of the universe's advice? It seems like if you accept the premise, you should be required to be bat-shit-crazy Phelps-style! Because these hybrid solutions where you accept that the Bible is the word of God but then ignore everything the Bible says because you never actually read the thing just sort of annoy me.

I know, sometimes good people are good in spite of the Bible, but it's like they are hitching a ride on secularism and then claiming that God did it. It's a bit like saying God is Love. Sure, they don't really mean that Jesus Christ is an emotion when you ask them, but "love" makes a great catchphrase and hitching your imaginary friend to it seems like a great political move.

Degrees of Wrong.

Stuart: "It's a little wrong to say to say a tomato is a vegetable, it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge." - The Big Bang Theory: The Hofstadter isotope.

I firmly believe this to be one of the best lines ever on TV. Only surpassed by a couple quips on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

"Yes, let's not jump to conclusions."
"I didn't jump. I took a tiny step and there conclusions were."

(Although, comparing quips with Buffy in the running is a bit unfair, "That'll put marzipan in your pie plate bingo." is the worst and it's actually pretty great because it's suppose to be bad.)

Back to the topic, much of my belief that this is a great quote comes from my love of understanding the gradation of wrongness and how it pertains to science. In short that science is the process by which we get less wrong over time by testing what we think might be the case against reality which is the case.

In a sense, it's a little wrong to say that gravity is Newtonian force, it's a lot wrong to say it's the spirit energy of everything trying to go to their ideal location.

What riddle has no answer?

This one.

Wait that can't be right. I guess it doesn't have an answer. Wait, that means...

Laci's Riddle

I checked the site:

http://lacigreen.blogspot.com/2010/07/anon.html

For the riddle.

"The answer is not simple, and the question has already been asked."

I think I solved it after a few seconds.

Highlight here for the answer: The riddle itself is the answer..

Alternatively: What's the answer? has a lot to recommend it.

St. Thomas Aquinus

I use to live near a school called that. I'm saddened I didn't know what his miracle was. It reminds me a bit of the woman who a Mother Teresa idol cured who was really cured by doctors.

Kepler is producing results...

Here's to one of the coolest stories of our lifetimes...

http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/07/25/14822461.html

NASA has so far formally announced only five new exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- but early data analysis indicates up to 140 of the 700 identified bodies are earth-like. That is, they are solid masses containing both land and water which could allow simple lifeforms to develop.

It's the first trickle of what could end up being a really awesome waterfall of awesome.

You run across silly things on the internet.

This plagued me for a good five hours one time before I finally gave up:

The plastic bit on the end of a shoelace is called an aglet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglet

Davy Crockett was born in the state of Franklin.

How strange. Davy Crockett was born in Franklin.

Now all I need to do is bide my time for half a decade until that factoid becomes that awesome thing I say and people wonder... "How does he know this stuff."

Which came first, the chicken or the good science reporting.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-how-to-make-an-egg.html

Researchers used a computer simulation to track the formation of eggshells, which are composed mostly of calcium carbonate. In the simulation, the OC-17 protein (illustration, left), which is found only in the hard part of the eggshell, clamps its molecular fingers onto a microscopic particle of calcium carbonate (right).

Yes, Virginia there is real science reporting! After the terrible coverage the science got previously it's good to know somebody out there is doing it right. Thank you Phil Berardelli.