APOD fractal

Is it just me, or does today's Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)



remind you of a famous fractal named Julia?

Zimmer interviews Gary Marcus

NYU Psychology professor Gary Marcus has just released his latest book Kluge about how the human brain is the product of tinkering. It is really one of the best refutations of the argument from design. Here he is interviewed by Carl Zimmer.

Charleton Heston dead at 84

Charleton Heston has died at the ripe old age of 84. In honor of him, I have found this video somebody made using clips from a classic Heston movie and the soundtrack from The Simpsons send-up on it. Yes, I realize that Dr. Zaius was not Heston's character, but it just seems so strangely appropriate.

JoCo in Philadelphia

(Poster by Len)

Last Wednesday (April 2nd), Jonathan Coulton played a concert in Philadelphia for the very first time. Or perhaps I should say that he played a concert in Philadelphia proper for the very first time. He was joined once again by Paul and Storm for a show at the World Cafe Live. This a larger venue than the last few times I saw him. Jen hooked me up with a ticket (her ticket--she couldn't make it--thanks Jen!) at a table near the front and center with some friends Caroline, Arthur, Jeanne, Kathy that was absolutely fantastic. This may be the best show I've been to yet. Unlike past shows where I brought props related to JoCo songs, I decided to honor Paul and Storm at this show: I brought panties (you'll have to check out the video to see what I'm talking about.)

Speaking of Paul and Storm, they played (with full cathedral echo) their very fun song Nun Fight. I'm sorry that I wasn't recording at the time.




But I was able to get some footage of the concert. Below is the playlist of the songs I recorded. It's not the complete set they played, but it's a decent chunk of it.

1. Opening Band
Watch the panties fly.


2. Nugget Man
An homage to a great inventor indeed.


3. IDEAL jingle
If you're not a 30+er from the Philly area, you won't get this one.


4. The Future Soon
Hey popular girls! Remember to treat the nerds nicely or this is what they'll do to you.


5. I'm Your Moon
Love song to Pluto from its moon Charon.


6. Flickr
This is the first time I've heard this song with the proper accompanying video. It's AOK!


7. Code Monkey
Needs no introduction.


8. Soft Rocked By Me
Jonathan sings about what it's like to be a total pussy.


9. Creepy Doll
Paul and Storm really rock on the back up during this song.


10. I Feel Fantastic
The song is fantastic.


11. Mr. Fancy Pants
Watch a grown man have fun with a $1000+ toy.


12. Dance Soterios Johnson, Dance (partial)
Unfortunately, due to my camera running out of memory and an emergency refill, I was only able to get the last verse. Luckily (for JoCo), what was lost was mostly screw-ups since this song was a special request that he hadn't rehearsed or played in like forever. Still, I felt that the performance was important enough that it needed to be posted anyway.


13. Still Alive
I added some "TRON" FX to this song written for the video game Portal. JoCo couldn't help laughing during the song because most of the audience members were holding up their cell phones (lit up). I guess cell phones are the "lighters" of the twenty first century.


14. Skullcrusher Mountain
What's with all the screaming?


15. Re: Your Brains
Even someone like me who couldn't sing to save his life can be a zombie for this audience sing-along.


16. First Of May
The JoCo classic about the coming of Spring (adult themes).


17. Sweet Caroline
Since I recorded this from the audience, I must apologize for the loud, off-key singing from the crowd. Oh wait, that was me ...
(Note to self: sign up for singing lessons)

Here's the video (total playing time 58:52) Enjoy!


UPDATE: The Voice of Free Planet X has a podcast with some highlights from the show as well as interviews.

UPDATE #2: The three panties from our table have made it to The Gallery Of Thrown Panties.

Is the Vogue cover racist?

If you haven't already heard, there's a bit of a controversy brewing over the latest cover of Vogue with LeBron James and Giselle Bundchen on it. Take a look for yourself.



The speculation is that the cover is invoking King Kong and therefore suggesting that LeBron James--and hence the black man--is a big brutish gorilla.



Clearly the resemblance is haunting. Almost too much to be explained away by mere coincidence. However, King Kong isn't the only cultural icon to employ the Gorilla kidnapping helpless beauty meme. For example, this Emmanuel Frémiet sculpture is obviously not King Kong.



So there are two other possibilities for the cover (I will go ahead and dismiss the explanation that the concept was completely original and the gorilla reference is just imagined by us). One is that the Vogue cover didn't copy the King Kong poster but was invoking the gorilla reference, and the the other is that the cover copied some other gorilla artwork. Given the fact that the Vogue photographer Annie Leibovitz has a history of 'artful borrowing', I think it's safe to say that the cover was in fact a copy of either the King Kong poster or something else.

For years a certain photographer has been calling us up to complain about Annie Leibovitz' penchant for recreating famous photographs and passing them off as original compositions. We usually chalked up the accusations to jealousy, and thought nothing more.

Now comes new evidence that our original source was right. Women's Wear Daily reported last week on the Vanity Fair photographer's "artful borrowing." WWD reporter Jeff Bercovici wrote that "a spokeswoman for the magazine acknowledged Wednesday that the cover photo of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Al Gore, shot by Annie Leibovitz, was 'inspired' by 'Ballet Society,' a 1948 portrait by Irving Penn of George Balanchine and three collaborators."

This seems to confirm that the Vogue cover is a copy. The question now becomes "Is it a copy of the King Kong poster?" While the resemblance is eerie, there seem to be too many inconsistencies for someone of Leibovitz' talent. So it shouldn't have been a big surprise when an old WWI recruiting poster surfaced.



If you compare that poster to the Vogue cover, it should be patently obvious where the inspiration came from. This leaves us with several questions.

Is the cover a copy of the "Mad Brute" WWI poster?
I think that clearly it is.

Is it racist?
Here I'm not too sure. In the original poster, the gorilla represents Germany in general, and Kaiser Wilhelm in particular (and you can't get much whiter than that). But that only raises the question of why compare LeBron James to the German war machine? It could just be that the mad brutes represent professional jocks. But would Leibovitz and Vogue have made a similar cover with a white athlete like Tom Brady? I'm guessing probably not, but I can see such a layout actually working (and without the surrounding controversy). Of course it doesn't help that the gorilla imagery always seems to involve a white girl. Perhaps a print of a gorilla kidnapping a young black beauty would remove the racial connotation. But a photographer who likes to copy classic artwork is an unlikely candidate to set that precedent.

But what really jumped out at me about this whole affair was that the old WWI poster (as well as the Frémiet sculpture) depicted a bare breasted woman. Such an image would be considered indecent today. As I've talked about before, one of the great sins of the religification of American society has been the demonization of the human body. News Flash: Female breasts aren't evil and seeing them won't psychologically mar children!

Star halfway across the Universe goes BOOM!

Have you ever seen a massive supernova in action. On March 19th, Pi-of-the-Sky did.

2008.03.19 "Pi of the Sky" telescope detected the brightest ever optical outburst from a distant universe. The explosion happened 7.5 billion light years from the Earth, halfway across the visible Universe. The telescope is only 71 mm in diameter.

Just in case you missed it, here's the movie.

Illinois: part of a balanced breakfast

It seems that pareidolia madness has struck Ebay once again. I guess I had become so accustomed to seeing such ridiculously stupid demand for nouveau religious relics such as the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich or the recent Jesus cheetoh, that I was actually a bit surprised to see a small bit of secular pareidolia fetch such a steep price. That's right, behold the Illinois Corn Flake which just sold for $1,350.00 on Ebay!



I admit, that rather pales in comparison to the $28,000.00 that the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich sold for. So maybe there is something to this religious devotion making people crazy spenders after all.

Happy Easter!

Beware the Ides of March!

Happy Birthday Albert!

Today is Albert Einstein's 129th birthday. It is also pi day. Therefore the two events are simultaneous. Or are they?

Road Trip

Molly, who shot to internet geek semi-stardom with her uke covers of Jonathan Coulton's Tom Cruise Crazy and Mr. Fancy Pants (as well as the Britney Spears classic Toxic) has just released a new original song about astronaut gone mental case Lisa Nowak.

Food fight!

How many battles and ethnic dishes can you identify?



(via Radula)

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

This is why I love The Onion!


Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

In Allah We Trust

I've never been much of a crusader for the popular atheist causes of removing the Under God from the pledge of allegiance or the In God We Trust from the currency. I've always thought (and still do) that there are more important fights out there. It's not that I'm fond of the phrase Under God, but I see children pledging an oath of allegiance to a national symbol as a proto-fascist imposition that has no place in country supposedly founded upon the principle of personal liberty. Ron Rosenbaum put it quite well.

The pledge is a kind of forced confession of orthodoxy. No, not water-boarding, but coercion nonetheless. Especially for peer-group-pressured school kids. Even if they have the right to opt out. In past school-prayer cases, the court has resisted the idea that the state should be implicated in even the social coercion or propagation of religion.

Busybody school boards and bombastic anthem peddlers at ball games should let people find their way to allegiance in their own fashion rather than making "allegiance" an implement of state power used to extract oaths.

I say dump the entire pledge!

Now, In God We Trust never really offended me before. It was one of those things that I always just took for granted but didn't fret about because it didn't really impact my life. I might roll my eyes when I caught sight of it on a bill, but I wouldn't get upset.

Words themselves don't have any intrinsic offensiveness to them. It is when those words represent something that we find deeply repulsive--such as certain human behaviors--that the words take on their offensive character. And so it is that I have begun to find In God We Trust on my currency increasingly distasteful. The blame falls squarely on the fundamentalist offensive (did you like that double entendre?) to relabel the United States as a "Christian Nation." Many of these misinformed marionettes like to defend their claim with "It even says 'In God We Trust' on the money!" Never mind the sheer ludicrousness of that argument; I've come to realize that those four words serve no useful purpose other than as a rallying point for the fundagelical zombies. And so I'm beginning to agree with those people who already do find those words offensive.

Until recently, I had no concise way of conveying to a Christian why that would or even should be offensive to me. Then yesterday I read this post by VJACK that began thus:

How do you suppose American Christians would feel about using currency on which "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is the greatest) was printed?

Wow! That says it all. Without much hesitation, that line inspired Todd Sayre to create this little photoshoped beauty.



How would Christians feel if their money looked like that? Pretty offended would be my guess. Yet from my perspective, there's no difference: both statements are equally silly and neither belongs on legal tender. And yes, I am aware that the "God" from In God We Trust need not necessarily refer to the Christian God (try telling that to a fundamentalist), but as an atheist I find all gods to be as invalid as Allah is to Christians. So the analogy is a good one.

Science Debate 2008 update

Several prominent scientists and other public figures have come forward and started making videos endorsing the debate. You can find them here on YouTube.

Below is a small sampling:

Laurence Krause


Kevin Knobloch


Sheril Kirshenbaum

The Secret Lives of Cell Phones

What do you do with your old cell phones when you get new ones? Do you throw them away or recycle them? Do you know how to recycle them? Have you ever wondered what happens to recycled cell phones? Are all recyclers the same?

The answers to these questions and more thanks to INFORM.

Hurricane Ivan from the Space Station

(via APOD)

The President of 9/11

In another case of life mimicking parody, The Onion has is re-advertizing this year-old article Giuliani To Run For President Of 9/11.

"My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise," said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. "As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all."

----------snip----------------

"Let us all remember how we felt on that day, with the world watching our every move, waiting on our every word," said Giuliani, flanked by several firefighters, ex-New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and Judith Nathan, his third wife. "With a campaign built on traditional 9/11 values, and with the help of every citizen who believes in the 9/11 dream, I want to make 9/11 great again."

------------snip---------------

After his downtown Manhattan announcement, Giuliani held an afternoon rally near the Pentagon. In the early evening, he flew to a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where he hosted a $5,000-a-plate fundraising dinner in a tent decorated with clouds of ash, streaming sheets of singed office paper, and small piles of authentic rubble from the World Trade Center site.

I guess as his campaign founders, he is pushing reality closer to the prescient parody, as can be seen here.

Finally I shall leave you with a television commercial I found thanks to my friend Troy from Comedy Jesus. Since I don't watch television, I have no idea whether this is a genuine advertisement or just more parody. I have to assume it's real because Troy wouldn't make fun of people like that (Check his website. He's Jesus! And after all, what would Jesus do?) ;-)

And then time slowed to a crawl

Several years ago when I was a svelte bicycle racer, I was almost involved in a big crash. More correctly put, I was in the middle of a big crash and almost went down myself. It was an early season Cat 4/5 race. For those unfamiliar with bicycle racing, category 5 is the entry level for licensed amateur racers, and category 4 is a Cat 5 racer with some experience in pack races. In peloton racing, position is of utmost importance. Moving up in the pack can be difficult. But there are certain parts of the course (oftentimes) where the road widens, or there's an uphill section, or something else where many racers feel they have a shot to "make their move" and gain better position.

This particular day it was an uphill on the course. At the time, I had been doing a lot of hill training so I was one of the racers who saw this as an opportunity to move up. But as we got to the bottom of the hill, all hell broke loose. There was a crash just 2 or 3 riders in front of me. Everything went into slow motion as the sounds of bikes crashing and people yelling filled my ears. I desperately looked for that opening in the melee as I adroitly fingered the brakes and maneuvered the handlebars. After what seemed like forever, I found my path and threaded my way through as bikes continued to smack the pavement all around me.

Once I was clear of the ruckus, time sped back up to normal speed and I had to sprint up the hill (remember, I used to be svelte) to catch back on to the pack. (It is a common tactic in bicycle racing that when you hear a crash behind you, you take advantage of the opportunity to thin out the pack by picking up the pace)

Did time really slow down for me as that crash was happening? Of course it didn't, but I certainly remember it that way. And I don't mean that I can remember the events in slow-motion, I mean that as far as I recall, they actually happened at that speed. It really feels like I experienced them in slo-mo. But did I? And whether I really did or whether it's just a memory trick, is there any way I could know for sure?

The basic principle behind a slow motion camera is pretty simple. Footage is shot at high speed (say 3x or 5x normal speed) then played back at normal speed. For example, if a sports broadcast is usually shown at 30 frames per second (fps), the network could have a camera that shoots at 90 fps and if an exciting turnover happens, they could play back the footage from that camera at the normal 30 fps and everything would appear to be moving 3x slower. (Super slow motion like the famous clip of the bullet piercing the apple are shot with high speed strobe lights since there aren't any shutters that fast and you need very bright light for such short exposures.)

A spots fan watching the broadcast will have seen both the original play in real time and the slow motion replay. That fan will have memory of both events. But suppose that the only memory was the slow motion memory? In other words, let's pretend that the event, as it happened, was recorded at an accelerated frame rate but then recorded into memory at the normal frame rate so that the recall--even a fraction of a second after the event and possibly even the working memory during the event--would be seen only in slow motion. Wouldn't this be indistinguishable from the event actually having been experienced in slow motion?

These are the kinds of questions I've been asking myself for years now. I had figured that the true explanation was along these lines, but that the slow motion camera analogy was flawed because I knew that that's not how memories are stored in the brain. But it was the best analogy I had.

Then last week I saw this article. There researchers put it to the test.

... to determine whether that distortion meant they could actually see more events happening in time -- like a camera in slow motion -- Eagleman and his students developed a special device called the perceptual chronometer that was strapped to the volunteers' wrists. Numbers flickered on the screen of the watch-like unit. The scientists adjusted the speed at which the numbers flickered until it was too fast for the divers to see.

They theorized that if time perception really slowed, the flickering numbers would appear slow enough for the divers to easily read while in free-fall.

They found that while the subjects were able to read numbers presented at normal speeds during the free-fall, they could not read them at faster-than-normal speeds.

"We discovered that people are not like Neo in The Matrix, dodging bullets in slow-mo. The paradox is that it seemed to participants as though their fall took a long time.

So if memories aren't being squeezed in at a higher rate, then where does the slow motion illusion come from?

The answer to the paradox is that time estimation and memory are intertwined: the volunteers merely thought the fall took a longer time in retrospect," he said.

During a frightening event, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down a secondary set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.

"In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories. And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took," Eagleman explained.

The study allowed them to deduce that a person's perception of time is not a single phenomenon that speeds or slows. "Your brain is not like a video camera," said Eagleman.

------ snip --------

"It can seem as though an event has taken an unusually long time, but it doesn't mean your immediate experience of time actually expands. It simply means that when you look back on it, you believe it to have taken longer," Eagleman said.

So if I'm reading this right, then the brain is in fact storing more information into memory about the event perceived in slow motion than surrounding events, but unlike the slow motion camera which stores extra frames, the extra information is related to your emotional state at the time. But since your brain perceives time passage as a function of quantity of information, the richer memory is perceived to have taken longer. Now that's wild! So your brain's perception of time is influenced by accompanying information in memory much like your brain's perception of distance is influenced by environmental clues. And so your memory of the relative duration of an event can be tricked muck like an optical illusion can trick your brain about relative length. (hint: the distance AB is equal to BC)


The above article also mentioned that the authors of that study had recently published a related study in the online journal PLoS ONE titled The Effect of Predictability on Subjective Duration. Naturally, I had to go read that study. There were more surprises in store.

But what does it mean to say that subjective time expands? We here set out to distinguish two hypotheses. In the first, perception works like a movie camera: when one aspect of the scene slows down, everything is slowed down. Thus, if a police car launching off a ramp were filmed using slow-motion photography, it would not only have a longer duration in the air, but also its sirens would blare in a lower pitch, and its lights would blink at a lower temporal frequency. In this case, duration, sound pitch and visual flicker all change hand-in-hand. The second hypothesis, in contrast, supposes that different temporal judgments are generated by different neural mechanisms–and while they often align, they are not required to. Thus, the police car may be judged to have a longer duration in the air, even while the frequencies of its sounds and flickering lights remain unchanged. In this paper, we distinguish these two hypotheses by testing the specific entailments of duration distortions, and in this way are able to directly address the notion of “time's” subjective expansion.

In the study, the researchers performed what is called the oddball illusion on volunteers. The subjects were shown a series of images which were all the same except for one oddball image which was shown in the middle of the sequence somewhere. The participants all reported that the oddball image was on the screen longer than the other images although they were all up for equal duration. In a follow-up experiment they introduced sounds. The results are fascinating.

Participants showed no difficulty in discriminating the frequency of the beep accompanying the visual oddball from the beep accompanying the standards (Figure 2b, middle bar). We conclude from this result that the oddball illusion is not accompanied by a concurrent distortion of perceived auditory frequency. This indicates that it is not time in general, but only visual durations in particular, that slow during the oddball.

And surely enough, this actually jibes with my recollection of the crash that day of the bike race. Even as everything around me was happening in slow motion, the crashing bikes and panicked yells all happened at normal pitch and time. I never really realized that until just now. Wow!

Fractal fun

My favorite fractal is the Mandelbrot Set.



Another fun fractal that I like is the Julia Set. What I've recently discovered thanks to someone I was talking to (sorry, can't remember his name) is that there is a section of the Mandelbrot zoom that looks eerily similar to the Julia Set. Look at the Comparison below.

Here's a Julia Set that I generated using GIMP2.



And here's a Mandelbrot zoom generated (by the above mentioned anonymous person) using Fractal eXtreme. (Much nicer quality than my GIMP rendering)



Pretty neat! No?

If you look closely, you'll see that they are different. If you can't see it, look at the center. Here's the Wikipedia explanation.

At first sight, these islands seem to consist of infinitely many parts like Cantor sets, as is actually the case for the corresponding Julia set Jc. Here they are connected by tiny structures so that the whole represents a simply connected set. These tiny structures meet each other at a satellite in the center that is too small to be recognized at this magnification. The value of c for the corresponding Jc is not that of the image center but, relative to the main body of the Mandelbrot set, has the same position as the center of this image relative to the satellite shown in zoom step 7.

While we're on the subject of Mandelbrot vs. Julia, I'll leave you with a Jonathan Coulton fan video of my favorite JoCo song--pay extra special attention to the sound clip at the very end ;-)

Earth setting on the Moon.

(Via)

Robert B. Eckhardt talk

Anyone who will be in the Philadelphia area this Saturday November 10th, feel free to stop by the Philadelphia Ethical Society Building in Rittenhouse Square to see Dr. Robert B. Eckhardt. The Talk is being sponsored by the Delaware Valley Chapter, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. It looks to be very interesting.

DVAU Program Meeting Event:
Saturday November 10, 2007, 1pm-2pm
Speaker: Dr. Robert B. Eckhardt, Ph.D., Professor of Developmental Genetics and Evolutionary Morphology
Topic: Linnaean taxonomy, the Christian Trinity, and Paranormal State: Faith-based challenges to Scientific Understanding

Location: Philadelphia Ethical Society Building, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA 19103

The Delaware Valley Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State is proud to present a talk from Dr. Robert Eckhardt, Professor of Developmental Genetics and Evolutionary Morphology, Department of Kinesiology, College of Health and Human Development in addition to the Center for Developmental and Health Genetics and Intercollege Graduate Program in Genetics at Penn State. Dr. Eckhardt will discuss the creationist threat to science education. Dr. Eckhardt was involved in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District lawsuit when the Dover school board mandated the teaching of "intelligent design" doctrine in public schools.

Dr. Eckhardt is also a prolific writer whose work has been published in such peer-reviewed publications as the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Light refreshments will follow the meeting.

Animator vs. Animation

If you haven't seen this yet, then watch it! If you've already seen it, it's worth watching again.

Trilogy of Terror!

New Spiff video: The Big Boom

Tuesday Madness 10/16/07 : Suicide Dream

Playboy Jesus

Catholic bishops in Belgium are all up in arms over a television ad for Plug TV that features an overweight, playboy, hippy Jesus having a fun night out on the town. Personally, I don't see what the big deal is.

Plug TV - Spot Jésus - censuré�
Uploaded by vinz-a

We miss you Steve Irwin!

Today is the one year anniversary of the accidental death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. He was one of my absolute favorite television nature show hosts. I miss him dearly.

Here's a tribute video done by Philadelphia comedian Ed Bassmaster.

New Spiff video

Jonathan Coulton Got Back (Here)

Last night I saw Jonathan Coulton (with Paul and Storm) for the third time. Once again, the show was a blast. But before I continue, let me dispense with the negatives of the show. First, due to previous sell-outs, the Milkboy Coffeehouse had two shows: a 7:30 and a 10:30 show. The early show (since I rely on public transportation, my hand was forced; I wouldn't have had a good way to get home from the late show) wasn't as packed as the previous shows I'd attended (a good thing--for me). But they were recording a live album that night, and it seems that the air conditioning system would have been too loud and interfered with the recording. So this was the first concert I attended in a sauna. Yeah, the performers tried to make light of the situation by making "heat jokes" between songs, but I was sweating as much as they were.

Seriously, the heat didn't bother me that much. I look forward to buying the live album so that I can relive the experience.

Anyhoo, I got to hear a new song by Paul and Storm (I believe it was called Your Town). Unfortunately they didn't play Epithets. Ah, well.

JoCo was great as usual. He opened up with that song about that Swedish furniture store.



Unfortunately, since I'm still getting used to my new camera, I guess I don't know all the settings yet. It seems that I had my video set for the highest resolution (I'll have to figure out how to fix that) and so even with 1 Gig memory, it was full after two and a half songs :-(

Luckily, the other full song I was able to record is a song that I haven't praised enough in my previous Jo Co blog posts. The song is the trump card I pull out when someone says to me "Jonathan Coulton is a talented singer/songwriter, but to call him genius is an exaggeration." The beauty is that it's a cover song. Here's the original. Remember it?



And here's JoCo.



If you you don't agree that he's a genius after hearing that, then there's obviously something wrong with you.

I'm too easy--celeb mug-shot!

Tripoli six freed!

The Tripoli Six are finally home! 

 

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were pardoned by President Georgi Parvanov upon their arrival in Sofia on Tuesday after spending 8 1/2 years in prison in Libya.

 

...

The six came down the steps from the airplane and were welcomed on the tarmac by family members who hugged them, one lifting the Palestinian doctor off the ground.

They were given bouquets of flowers, and Bulgaria's president and prime minister were on hand, greeting the nurses and Sarkozy, who had been part of the delegation that negotiated the group's return.

It's a shame that six innocent medics were held hosatge for so long by a heartless dictator and that the condition of their release was that Bulgaria pay blackmail.  But at least their nightmare is over and I'm happy for that.

 

Michael Vick is done!

Michael Vick is done! You don't torture and kill domestic pets for the pleasure of it and expect forgiveness. It ain't gonna happen! Americans love their dogs and cats and just aren't going to forgive him for what he's done. If he ever plays in another game he will get a reception worthy of Andy Card. I don't care how good of a player he is, I have no use for him.

I think Cenk of The Young Turks got it exactly right. (And Ben is also right--I won't be drafting Alge Crumpler this year.

Zombies in orange jumpsuits!

Who knew that Filipino prisoners could dance like that?



They also do a version of Hail holy queen from Sister Act (but I like the zombies better)

(via)

GOD Inc. sold to the SciFi channel!

I've previously posted videos by Mr. Deity. Another YouTube series of the same genre that I've been a big fan of is God Inc. The premise is that God runs his affairs just like a typical bureaucratic company, with all the petty bickering and office politics.

The good news is that it's been picked up by the SciFi channel. Hooray!

What's Opera Doc?

I just found out that the greatest cartoon ever is turning fifty years old this week.
(thanks raincoaster!)
UPDATE: The original release date was July 6, 1957. So I'm about a week late--damn!

Happy Bastille Day!

It is once again that time of year when our inner frenchmen come and sing the Chant de guerre de l'Armée du Rhin. It is also that time when I join n the chorus of voices calling upon the French to change their national anthem. I like the melody--I really do. But the lyrics are vile! They are some of the most gory, jingoistic, and savage words I have ever heard in a song, and this is what French children are being taught to sing!

And I find the Marseillaise apologists about as convincing as Christian apologists who ignore the cruelty and genocide in the Bible. You can interpret them however you wish, but you can't change the words. That's what the song says! Read it for yourself (from Wikipedia).

(Sorry about the big space below, but I just can't seem to get tables to work correctly on blogger, and it's beginning to piss me off!)

La Marseillaise
Allons enfants de la Patrie	Arise, children of the fatherland
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !	The day of glory has arrived!
Contre nous de la tyrannie	Against us, the tyranny's
L'étendard sanglant est levé. (bis)	Bloody banner is raised. (repeat)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes	Do you hear in the fields
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?	The howling of these savage soldiers?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras	They are coming into your midst
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes !	To cut the throats of your sons, your wives!
Aux armes, citoyens !	To arms, citizens!
Formez vos bataillons !	Form your battalions!
Marchons, marchons !	Let us march, let us march!
Qu'un sang impur	May tainted blood
Abreuve nos sillons !	Water our fields!
Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,	What does this horde of slaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés ?	Traitors, and plotting kings want?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves	For whom these vile chains
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés ? (bis)	These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Français, pour nous, ah! Quel outrage,	Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage,
Quels transports il doit exciter !	What fury it must arouse!
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer	It is us they dare plan
De rendre à l'antique esclavage !	To return to the old slavery!
Aux armes, citoyens...	To arms, citizens...
Quoi! Des cohortes étrangères	What! These foreign cohorts!
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !	They would make laws in our homes!
Quoi! Ces phalanges mercenaires	What! These mercenary phalanxes
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers ! (bis)	Would cut down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Grand Dieu! Par des mains enchaînées	Good Lord! By chained hands
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient	Our brow would yield under the yoke
De vils despotes deviendraient	The vile despots would become
Les maîtres de nos destinées !	The masters of our destinies!
Aux armes, citoyens...	To arms, citizens...
Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides	Tremble, tyrants and traitors
L'opprobre de tous les partis	The shame of all good men
Tremblez! Vos projets parricides	Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix ! (bis)	Will receive their just reward! (repeat)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre	Against you, we are all soldiers
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,	If our young heroes fall,
La terre en produit de nouveaux,	The earth will bear new ones,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre !	Ready to join the fight against you!
Aux armes, citoyens...	To arms, citizens...
Français, en guerriers magnanimes,	Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Portez ou retenez vos coups !	Bear or hold back your blows!
Épargnez ces tristes victimes	Spare these sad victims
À regret s'armant contre nous (bis)	That they may regret taking up arms against us (repeat)
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires	But not these bloody despots
Mais ces complices de Bouillé	These accomplices of Bouillé
Tous ces tigres qui, sans pitié,	All these tigers who mercilessly
Déchirent le sein de leur mère !	Ripped out their mothers' breast!
Aux armes, citoyens...	To arms, citizens...
Amour sacré de la Patrie,	Sacred patriotic love,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs	Lead and support our avenging arms
Liberté, Liberté chérie,	Liberty, cherished liberty,
Combats avec tes défenseurs ! (bis)	Fight back with your defenders! (repeat)
Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire	Under our flags, let victory
Accoure à tes mâles accents,	Hurry to your manly tone,
Que tes ennemis expirants	So that your enemies, in their last breath,
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire !	See your triumph and our glory!
Aux armes, citoyens...	To arms, citizens...
(Couplet des enfants)	(Children's Verse)
Nous entrerons dans la carrière	We shall enter the career
Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus	When our elders will no longer be there
Nous y trouverons leur poussière	There we shall find their dust
Et la trace de leurs vertus (bis)	And the mark of their virtues (repeat)
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre	Much less jealous of surviving them
Que de partager leur cercueil,	Than of sharing their coffins,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil	We shall have the sublime pride
De les venger ou de les suivre !	Of avenging or following them!
Aux armes, citoyens...	To arms, citizens...

I'm shocked! Shocked to read those nasty lyrics!

These bloggers rock!

Featuring:
John Logsdon(Sex, Genes & Evolution)
Jonathan Badger(T. Taxus)
Yersinia
Moselio Schaechter(Small Things Considered)
Tara Smith(Aetiology)
Larry Moran(Sandwalk)

Gaga likes Ice Cream

I promise a substantive post soon. In the meantime, here's another video I really like.

Faraday cages rock!

High Powered Job - Watch more free videos

(via)

Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?

Debate time!

R.I.P. Mr. Wizard!

Don Herbert, a.k.a. "Mr. Wizard," Died today at the age of 89.

I'm a bit young for the original run of Watch Mr. Wizard, but I did grow up on the reruns. I absolutely loved that show.

Whenever anyone asks me who the most important person in science is, I always answer Mr. Wizard (or his modern counterpart, Bill Nye). The simple reason is that he made science fun for a large number of children. I don't want to take anything away from all the great scientists who've made science as robust as it is today, but many of them might have chosen a different carreer path if it hadn't been for Mr. Wizard. And I don't want to take anything away from all the great science teachers who've influenced children around the world, but none had the reach of Mr. Wizard.

Good bye Don Herbert. You will be sorely missed.

Carnival of Mathematics: Edition IX is up

The ninth edition of The Carnival of Mathematics is up at JD2718. Sorry that I missed editions 7 & 8. I've been slacking a bit lately. This edition is a fun one. There were several posts about things that I always found fascinating when I was younger (and still do). Make sure to check out the posts on The Monty Hall Paradox, The Prisoner's Dilemna (including a new twist hadn't heard before), e^iπ + 1 = 0, and The Dollar Auction. Good stuff!

Heffernan on YouTube

Today's New York Times has an article about YouTube (The Many Tribes of YouTube) (free registration required) by Virginia Heffernan. The focus of the article was around the YouTube function Video Response.

Really the only authentic response to a YouTube video is another YouTube video — the so-called “video response.”

YouTube appeared in February 2005, when it was modestly billed as a site on which people could swap personal videos. Since then, however, its video-response feature, which essentially allows users to converse through video, has managed to convene partisans of almost every field of human endeavor, creating video clusters that begin with an opening video, and snowball as fans and detractors are moved to respond with videos of their own. In answer to a lousy, stammering video, say, a real YouTuber doesn’t just comment, “You idiot — I could do that blindfolded!” He blindfolds himself, gets out his video-capable Canon PowerShot and uploads the results.

I think that is an accurate assessment of the YouTube culture. (DISCLOSURE: One of the main reasons that I've been neglecting this blog of late is that I've become hopelessly addicted to YouTube. You can find my channel here. It has become my atheist platform. I am considering starting a new channel where I talk about my favorite science related news headlines--much like my original intent when I started this blog.) The video response feature is at the heart of the growing YouTube community. It allows users to interact with each other in ways that were just not available two or three years ago. I've become a big fan of the feature and I try to take full advantage of it. There are some users who make almost exclusively video response videos. Many users rate the success of their particular videos based on how many video responses they get. And some videos specifically ask for video responses. My personal favorites are the Blasphemy Challenge (more on this one later) and the Ok Go dance contest (which didn't even get a metion in the Heffernan piece--I guess it doesn't help that the contest is long over).

In her article, Heffernan goes on to profile five different examples of popular video response "tribes." One of them is the blasphemy challenge. Once again, someone in the media gets it wrong and needs a good pwning. Let's look at what she wrote.

Individual religious testimony abounds on YouTube, as do sermons from miscellaneous (and sometimes extinct) religious institutions, but these are posted to fire up discussion, not to lay down any laws. Versions of the last sermon of the prophet Muhammad are posted — one runs “Star Wars”-style with the words receding into outer space — as are Christian sermons on sexual purity and Palestinian sermons that contain anti-Semitic slurs.

Viewers are urged to discuss them, and they do. Curiously, the religious group that makes the most imaginative and despotic use of YouTube are atheists.

I have a couple of problems with that last sentence.

1. ATHEISTS AREN'T A RELIGIOUS GROUP!!! Atheism isn't a religion. An atheist is simply someone who doesn't believe in the existence of any gods. That's it!
2. I'm completely baffled by her use of the word "despotic." Did she just throw it in there because it sound ominous? My dictionary defines "despotic" as of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a despot or despotism; autocratic; arbitrary; tyrannical. WTF? How does that word describe the YouTube atheists?

She goes on.

The Rational Response Squad, a furtive organization devoted to curing theism, has challenged YouTubers to post videos of themselves denying the existence of the Holy Spirit and thereby — in the group’s reading of Mark 3:29 — damn themselves for eternity.

More than 1,200 people have posted blasphemy videos as of this writing. In each one, a single person speaks the line, “I deny the Holy Spirit.” Sometimes he or she adds more: a name, a speech, a further denial of Easter Bunny-like entities.

That's about right. My only little complaint here is that she's implying that the RRS came up with that interpretation of Mark 3:29. I've talked about this before, so I will just mention that that particular reading of Mark (and Luke and Matthew who repeat it) is one of the most common interpretations being taught to children in churches and Xian schools accross the country in order to scare them into belief.

Some blasphemers are jaunty, some are insolent, some are scary, some are nervous. But all of them (young and old, mostly English-speakers, but with a range of accents and ethnicities) seem to believe they are making a statement of some gravitas — issuing a reproof to doctrine, possibly risking their salvation.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! The YouTube blasphemers DON'T believe that there's ANY gravitas in their statement. Did she completely miss the point of listing the Easter bunny alongside of the holy spirit? (Yes, obviously) It's the believers who think that these statement carry some gravitas. The whole point is to throw it back in their faces by effectively saying "this is just a silly statement about a silly imaginary being from a silly religion." No one thinks that they're riking their salvation because there's no such thing as eternal salvation! If I were to make a video of myself walking under a ladder, it would be to show that there's nothing to be afraid of, NOT because I believed that there might be consequenses for that action. AAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

Anyway, I might as well show how she finished the section on blasphemy.

On the face of each participant is both a wonderful purity of purpose — the mandate is so simple, the one-line script so unforgettable — and a clear vulnerability.

Will anyone regret taking the so-called Blasphemy Challenge? If so, can they retract their videos?

Assuming (and I'm not quite sure why I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt here) that that last sentence was made tongue-in-cheek, I don't have any complaints about that. In fact, I think it's a cute way to end the section.

Hooray for UMASS grads!

Two days ago, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst gave Andrew Card at honorary degree during their graduation ceremonies. Watch the video below to see how the faculty and graduates reacted to this "honor." It's awesome!

I can't really understand why the University would choose someone like Card for this in the first place. I can only guess that there remains a chasmic disconnect between the inhabitants of the "ivory tower" and the sentiments of the masses. Perhaps this incident will gve them a jolt of reality.

Hungry Andromeda!

The latest Spitzer video from Dr. Robert Hurt.

How the internet is changing the popular music scene

This week's New York Times Magazine has an article by Clive Thompson titled Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog. The article is about how the internet is changing the way musical artists sell and promote themselves.

In the past — way back in the mid-’90s, say — artists had only occasional contact with their fans. If a musician was feeling friendly, he might greet a few audience members at the bar after a show. Then the Internet swept in. Now fans think nothing of sending an e-mail message to their favorite singer — and they actually expect a personal reply. This is not merely an illusion of intimacy. Performing artists these days, particularly new or struggling musicians, are increasingly eager, even desperate, to master the new social rules of Internet fame. They know many young fans aren’t hearing about bands from MTV or magazines anymore; fame can come instead through viral word-of-mouth, when a friend forwards a Web-site address, swaps an MP3, e-mails a link to a fan blog or posts a cellphone concert video on YouTube.

So musicians dive into the fray — posting confessional notes on their blogs, reading their fans’ comments and carefully replying. They check their personal pages on MySpace, that virtual metropolis where unknown bands and comedians and writers can achieve global renown in a matter of days, if not hours, carried along by rolling cascades of popularity. Band members often post a daily MySpace “bulletin” — a memo to their audience explaining what they’re doing right at that moment — and then spend hours more approving “friend requests” from teenagers who want to be put on the artist’s sprawling list of online colleagues. (Indeed, the arms race for “friends” is so intense that some artists illicitly employ software robots that generate hundreds of fake online comrades, artificially boosting their numbers.)

A-list stars are made by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns; the B-listers need to build their network from the ground up. This has kind of always been the case. What the internet has done is change the nature of the network. This new breed of stars is able to, at once, get more personal with their fans while expanding the size and geographical distribution of that fan base.

Of course, the featured artist in the article was none other than Jonathan Coulton.

Click on the above picture to see Jonathan Coulton explain Code Monkey (drawing by Len)

I've blogged about Jonathan before (being a fan) so here it goes again (that reference will become clear soon enough). JoCo has managed to build up such a grassroots network, and much of its success is not due to anything he did or planned himself.

Coulton’s fans are also his promotion department, an army of thousands who proselytize for his work worldwide. More than 50 fans have created music videos using his music and posted them on YouTube; at a recent gig, half of the audience members I spoke to had originally come across his music via one of these fan-made videos. When he performs, he upends the traditional logic of touring. Normally, a new Brooklyn-based artist like him would trek around the Northeast in grim circles, visiting and revisiting cities like Boston and New York and Chicago in order to slowly build an audience — playing for 3 people the first time, then 10, then (if he got lucky) 50. But Coulton realized he could simply poll his existing online audience members, find out where they lived and stage a tactical strike on any town with more than 100 fans, the point at which he’d be likely to make $1,000 for a concert. It is a flash-mob approach to touring: he parachutes into out-of-the-way towns like Ardmore, Pa., where he recently played to a sold-out club of 140.

Let me just say that I'm one of those fans that Clive spoke to at the Ardmore concert, and indeed my first exposure to JoCo was through a Spiff video. (Although when I went to JoCo's website for the first time and started listening to all the music, I realized that I had heard Mandelbrot Set before but didn't know who sang it.) I really like the idea that many of these fan created videos have sort of become the "default official videos" for those songs--cool!

Speaking of cool homemade videos, the article also talks about the band Ok Go which is actually signed to a major record label (along with all the marketing machinery that comes with it) but became in instant internet sensation by employing some of these same tactics.

This confluence of forces has produced a curious inflection point: for rock musicians, being a bit of a nerd now helps you become successful. When I spoke with Damian Kulash, the lead singer for the band OK Go, he discoursed like a professor on the six-degrees-of-separation theory, talking at one point about “rhizomatic networks.” (You can Google it.) Kulash has put his networking expertise to good use: last year, OK Go displayed a canny understanding of online dynamics when it posted on YouTube a low-budget homemade video that showed the band members dancing on treadmills to their song “Here It Goes Again.” The video quickly became one of the site’s all-time biggest hits. It led to the band’s live treadmill performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, which in turn led to a Grammy Award for best video.

Just in case you haven't seen the video yet (perhaps you've been living in a cave but somehow managed to find this insignificant blog), I've embedded it below. Quick note: Damian Kulash is the tall skinny guy with the red pants. The one you see lip-syncing the lead vocals is the band's bass player (and childhood friend of Kulash) Tim. Not only do these guys rock, they have a sense of humor. Awesome!

Happy Mother's Day!

Raise your hand if you know the history of Mother's Day. Until a couple of days ago, I didn't. Then I heard about Mother's Day for Peace and that the holiday was originally founded as part of the anti-war movement.

In the United States, Mother's Day was originally suggested by poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe. In 1870, after witnessing the carnage of the American Civil War and the start of the Franco-Prussian War, she wrote the original Mother's Day Proclamation calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace. This "Mother's Day Proclamation" would plant the seed for what would eventually become a national holiday.

After writing the proclamation, Howe had it translated into many languages and spent the next two years of her life distributing it and speaking to women leaders all over the world. In her book Reminiscences, Howe wrote, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" She devoted much of the next two years to this cause, and began holding annual "Mother's Day" gatherings in Boston, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

In 1907, thirty-seven years after the proclamation was written, women's rights activist Anna Jarvis began campaigning for the establishment of a nationally observed Mother¹s Day holiday. And in 1914, four years after Howe's death, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day as a national holiday.

How come I never heard that before? That's just way too cool! It is superior by several orders of magnitude to the sappy Hallmark holiday it has become. Anyhoo, Mother's Day for Peace has teamed up with No More Victims for a truly special "return to the roots" Mother's Day.

Follow the links above for more information.



And now I leave you with the Mother's Day proclamation being read by some prominent mothers. Happy Mother's Day!

Battle of the Surfaces

Nadal the Spanish clay king has triumphed over Federer 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (10) in Mallorca today.

First of May

Happy First of May! WARNING: ADULT CONTENT!