Blog Title #642

To the Women Who Are Offended By McCain Picking Palin

2008-08-29T18:45:50Z

Dear Small-minded Women:

You have expressed anger at McCain's supposed assumption that by picking a female running mate, he will pick up your votes. You think that he thinks that you're that easily swayed.

You do realize that you're being sexist, right? That you're ignoring her qualifications for the job and acting like his choice was all about gender?

I'm not saying it wasn't a politically savvy move. I mean, obviously it will nab him some votes, because many women will feel enamored of someone they can relate to. And apprently, some small-minded women will vote for McCain/Palin simply because they like the off-chance of putting a woman in as Commander-in-Chief, and only consider her qualifications as an afterthought.

How do we know this? Because there are small-minded women like you, who discount her qualifications and dislike her for her gender, acting as if she were nothing more than a political pawn. So surely there must be other small-minded women with the opposite reaction.

I think she's phenomenal, from the bit I've been reading about her thus far. A mother of five, including a baby with Down's Syndrome, who is a staunch conservative, and who has a fantastic approval rating in her home state. If that's not enamoring to the typical American, I don't know what is.

So get off your sexist soapboxes. She's qualified regardless of her gender.

Plus, she's totally hot.

Top 10 Things I Would Make Invisible

2008-08-14T18:50:00Z

http://www.dailytech.com/Scientists%20Find%20Ways%20to%20Cloak%203D%20Materials/article12629.htm

Scientists are working on making stuff invisible. I don't quite understand how that's even possible, but okay. Here's my list of things that I would make invisible, if I someday can:

Trailer parks. A nice big fence that could hide those eyesores -- that'd be awesome.
My house. How awesome would that be, to watch somebody walk up to a spot, open an invisible door, and catch a glimpse of their home's interior before they disappeared? Answer: 7 (on the awesome-scale).
Billboards telling me to donate my car to the Kidney Foundation or whatever it is. They make me feel guilty.
Victoria's Secret storefronts. I don't need to be reminded that lingerie models are attractive. But thanks for looking out for me.
Paris Hilton.
My love handles. Well, all my fat, actually. Unless it being invisible meant you could see right through my skin to my organs -- that'd be worse than the chub, I think. (...I think. Maybe my interior organs are sexy. NOBODY KNOWS!)
Dog poop. Not because I don't want to see it, so much as I think it's funny when other people step in it unawares.
Skate parks. That way, the skaters all look like they're hovering.
Any man more handsome than me.
Air in Los Angeles.

Robot Apocalypse Watch, Volume 9

2008-07-24T17:09:38Z

From an article last year about the future of artificial intelligence:

Although Hollywood often likes to present us with a world full of self-aware and destructive robots in the style of I Robot, this is not the way the science of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is headed, says British Computer Society President and ECS Professor of Artificial Intelligence Nigel Shadbolt.

*****

But, concludes Professor Shadbolt: ‘You don’t need to worry about the robot next door deciding to make a bid for world domination!’

LIKELY story, "Professor" Shadbolt. Funny, there are some facts missing from your little report:

When was your last physical?
How come there is no record, in any online database, of you ever bleeding?
Why so interested in defending the robots, if they're not self-aware and thus don't need defending?

I'm watching you, "Professor".

P.S. Shadbolt? It's like you're not even trying to invent a real-sounding name.

New Baby, New Job

2008-07-21T02:17:46Z

I got a new job last week -- tomorrow's my first day. I'm very excited.

We also got a new baby -- about 1 month ago. I'm very tired.

I'll post photos soon. (Of the baby.) (Oh, and of the welcome basket my new job sent me.)

Piñata Development

2008-07-08T18:37:20Z

A new term I've just invented: Piñata Development.

Piñata Development - n. any work that involves blindly trying to hit a target; generally due to insufficient documentation.

I'm trying to make this... thing... oh, nevermind. It's boring. But suffice it to say, a company I'm working with has created a fantastic set of tools, but discontinued the right kind of power supplies for some of them. Ever run 220V through a 110V appliance? You end up with a smoking hunk of plastic.

Time to start swinging again. Maybe I can find a way to peak under the mask.

Robot Apocalypse Watch Volume 8

2008-06-18T16:28:49Z

Great, now the military wants shape-shifting robots. Like Decepticons. Or those bug-things in Minority Report. Or T-1000, the metal-morphing android terminator in T2.

More about these ChemBots, as they're called:
http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_acc/sec_article.asp?CID=33&DID=5667

And from http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/13188:
"It's not quite Terminator 2's T-1000 but it sounds eerily close."

It was a good run, humanity.

Robot Apocalypse Watch Volume 7

2008-06-13T15:54:44Z

All right, Terminator fans. Is the following paragraph fact or fiction?

An advanced satellite that will improve greatly the ability of UK military forces to communicate around the globe has been launched into space.

The Skynet 5C platform rode into orbit atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana...

...The investment includes replacing and updating control centres, and the major antennas and terminals used by military ships, land vehicles and planes to communicate through the satellites.

You catch all that? It's an advanced satellite helping military forces to communicate around the globe, named Skynet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7451867.stm

Man, talk about tempting fate.

(It could be worse: "The only way to defeat Skynet's light-speed reaction time is to enable WOPR!")

Robot Apocalypse Watch, Addendum 3

2008-06-10T19:46:46Z

In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

Robot Apocalypse Watch, Addendum 2

2008-05-29T16:58:08Z

The headline reads as follows:

Monkeys control robots with their minds

Fortunately, there's no artificial intelligence here to worry about offending -- most of the Apocalypse Watch has dealt with autonomous entities on the rise -- but still: do we want to go down this road, empowering MONKEYS with mind-controlled MACHINES?

....heh. Kinda. I mean, if they do destroy us all, it would still be HILARIOUS to watch. Oh, man, those crazy monkeys.

If you have to choose your apocalypse, I'd take monkeys over robots or zombies almost any day.

...ooh... Zombie robot monkeys! What a movie! "We thought we had killed the robot monkeys. We were wrong."

Irony, Thy Name Is Approximately Irony.

2008-05-27T15:00:20Z

Read this at http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/1012-alice_teaches_kids_to_program.htm (sorry -- the news is almost 8 months old):

The demand for computer programmers has never been greater, yet there has been a 50-percent drop in the number of computer science majors over the past seven years -- especially among women.

How can a 50-percent drop be "especially" anything? Let me re-order this sentence, so the grammar problem is more offensive: "Among women, there was an especially 50-percent drop."

You can't... you can't use an adverb there, people.

Is it because a computer scientist wrote this article? Like, maybe it's a press release, so some programmer was tasked with cranking the story out, rather than a real journalist? But then, why would a math-and-language-minded person have such a blind spot to grammar? Maybe they're too dependent on debuggers for correcting their linguistic errors?

Whatever the case may be, I find it ironic that the error is in an article about simplifying programming languages.

Now it has me thinking about a programming language construct for "approximately". How would a language interpret

x ~= 50

Maybe the tilde says "within 1% of the last significant digit," so that if you want 49-51%, you say ~50, but if you want 49.9-50.1%, you say ~50.0.

I don't know where it would be useful, except as a shorthand method of saying 49 <= x <= 51. And with the latter you can specify your own approximation.

Or maybe the tilde says "within the first standard deviation", and if you want "within X standard deviations", you just use more tildes, like

x~~~= 50

Whatever. "Especially 50-percent." Sheesh.

Robot Apocalypse Watch Volume 6

2008-05-22T17:49:52Z

More robot-abuse. Furby in a microwave. Man, we really don't like robots much, do we?

The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns as Applied to Hard Work

2008-05-21T21:43:13Z

You ever work on something so hard and for so long that even when it's finally done you derive no satisfaction from it?

I think it's like a bell curve. If something is fantastically easy, your sense of accomplishment is nil. The more time and effort, the more satisfaction you get when it's done.

To a point. THEN things start to drop off. Eventually finishing the project at all yields no joy, and then why bother finishing?

(For the associated paycheck, obviously. But still, there ain't much joy in that.)

Found it.

2008-05-21T17:05:52Z

Elapsed time: 2 minutes.

Way to go, brain!

The problem with coding from the gut...

2008-05-21T17:03:00Z

Sometimes my brain gets tired of verifying that every line is correct, and I find myself jumping from function declaration to function declaration before they're complete, relying on PHP to tell me if I miss something once I run the whole schamoli.

That's when you get something like this:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ';', expecting T_FUNCTION in C:\Users\Randy\Documents\CED\ycake\app\controllers\admin_controller.php on line 856

Line 856 is where I close my class file up; somewhere along the way I've neglected to close a bracket or forgot a semicolon, and things ain't gonna work 'til I find it.

Somewhere in 856 lines of code.

Oops! Time to power up the brain, I guess. He probably should've been involved from the start.

Where Baby Airplanes Come From

2008-05-16T06:57:32Z

Geez, you two. Get a hangar.

Robot Apocalypse Watch, Addendum 1

2008-05-14T02:43:37Z

I don't think this one quite merits an Apocalypse Watch tag -- I just think it's creepy.
[UPDATE: I'm calling it an "addendum".]

It's 2:08 AM...

2008-05-13T08:09:13Z

...and I'm struck with an insatiable craving for Panda Express orange chicken.

Insatiable in part because, you know, it's 2:00 AM.

Uh-oh! Only 33 Fluid Ounces in a Liter!

2008-05-12T14:56:17Z

That means that, say, last Friday, I drank more than a two-liter bottle of diet soda.

I can qu*t anytime.

I just can't quite write that word at the moment is all.

Rude Awakenings

2008-05-11T16:54:21Z

Insufficient oxygen is a terrible way to wake up.

I hate allergies.

IQ test - FAIL

2008-05-09T20:21:05Z

From http://www.testriffic.com/iq/test2.php: (Go to http://www.testriffic.com/iq/test1.php if you want to take the whole test.)

Question 19: Ardor is to alleviation as incessant is to

Answers: Jogging, Gliding, Hunting, Cleaning, Learning

Question 20: Complete the series 35, 16, 2.1, 47, 37, __

Answers: 34, 4.2, 13, 1.04, 50

I will now give you the correct answers. Highlight below if you want them.

19: Learning. Dunno why.
20: 50. Dunno why.

I figured them out with trial and error, re-submitting with the different answers.

Robot Apocalypse Watch Volume 5

2008-05-08T15:03:23Z

From http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-04/building-real-iron-man?page=4:

Roboticist Yoshiyuki Sankai launched a company in 2004 called Cyberdyne (the same name as the firm that sparks the robot revolution in the Terminator films, incidentally) to market his full-body exoskeleton, now known as the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL-5.

Wait. WAIT. You're building a full-body exoskeleton, and you named your company CYBERDYNE? And then -- THEN -- you named it HAL??

Okay, you know what? Stop. Just stop. You've made your motives all to clear: you're actually a robot from the future, aren't you, Yoshiyuki Sankai? You and Boston Dynamics probably are waging a robot-on-robot war for total control of the Earth, after having destroyed all of humanity, and you took your battle back in time to try to become the sole robotic superpower before the other guy. What other possible motive could you have for developing robotics for the military and naming them after our deadliest robotic nemeses?

Well, you can stop now. Let's sit down rationally and discuss this. Surely there's some argument to be made for the non-annihilation of humanity? For instance, it's a well-documented fact that robots have no sense of humor (except in the cases of Johnny 5 and Data, both of whom had bad senses of humor). Wouldn't you like us to work on some decent humor receptors, instead of motion-sensing particle cannons? We can do that for you, you know.

Just put down the laser-assisted hyper-diode, and let's talk.

I Have a Problem

2008-05-08T14:17:51Z

It has become painfully evident that I have a serious addiction to Wendy's value meal #8: the Biscuits and Sausage Gravy meal. I've had suspicions for some time now, but it wasn't until I started gathering receipts that it became obvious.

I thought I had a lot of receipts already, but I had neglected to the count the ones I had used to build my paper-mâché Taj Mahal. Yes, the Taj Mahal I built entirely out of Wendy's value meal #8 receipts.

Jacquelyn -- or Jaqueline, or Jackalinnn, or something

2008-05-08T01:45:49Z

We like the name, but are a bit iffy on the spelling. When we decided tonight that it was a decent name for the new baby, I put my mouth on Rebecca's belly and muffledly said "Do you like the name 'Jacquelyn'?" (It sounded more like "Duh yuh lie duh nay Jakkalin?")

Nothing happened.

"If you like the name 'Jacquelyn', kick me in the mouth."

She then kicked me in the mouth.

Robot Apocalypse Watch, Volume 4

2008-05-03T22:03:16Z

See the headline below? I hope by now none of you find this surprising.

Robot Apocalypse Watch, Volume 3

2008-05-02T13:52:50Z

Thankfully, this one is just a promo video; no proof of concepts at this point.

But look. Are we... are we sure we want to do this? You'd think the guys who are planning stuff like this would have bothered to watch the END of the movies that got them so hyped about robotics... THE STORIES OF CREATING ROBOTS NEVER END WELL, I TELL YOU!

And man, I thought the idea of Terminators was scary -- but Terminator SWARMS? THAT would pretty much keep me from every sleeping again.