Big Dog

This is a real thing - tech awesome!

Let's Do a Drudge Wrap!

No, not a Drudge rap. That would just be silly. I'm just going to point out a couple things on the Drudge Report website today so you can go directly to the links and not feed into any of his fraudulent, bullshit rankings. Sub-headings are the links, all of which - as always - open in a new window or tab. And it's not all political BS either, more like a general news day wrap.

Fatty Trompe l'Oeil
It's the nanny state! Or so that's the general call to arms alluded to in even posting this story.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to use marketing tricks to encourage kids to pick fruits and veggies over cookies and french fries.

Oh noes! Gubmit spending too!?!

Hell, we've got a country full of mommies and daddies (literal or figurative pundits) doing nothing but bitching that the kids are fat. If the nanny's the only one willing to do something about it: bring in the motherfuckin' nanny!


Boo Hoo Mortgage Man
Some guy put a huge sign on his lawn because he's in foreclosure. And ... wait for it ... I kinda agree with the conservative comments on this one.

THE ACREAGE, Fla. - Juan Guzman has a large, lawn-wide sign in his front yard labeled 'JP Morgan Chase help.' It's his last hope to save his dream home.

The Acreage man built his house in 2007 but couldn't handle the mortgage payment of $3,600 a month.

He said he tried negotiating a lower loan from his bank but it wouldn't budge.

Last year Guzman became unemployed and now his house is in foreclosure.

Woah, woah, buddy. You built a home and right off the bat couldn't handle the mortgage? Then you lost your job? Yes, banks are teh debil adn need to be reined in, but you don't get a pass for shitty planning and plain stupidity. Your mortgage was $3600/mo!!! Sorry bud; ya done fucked up. Walk away and downsize.


Condi's Condo!

Um, there was this story about Condoleezza Rice but it was too boring even for commentary. Click above if you need a nap.


Paladino n Cuomo, Sittin in a Tree...

You live in one of the most diverse cities in the world. You want to be Governor of the state. You probably shouldn't berate gay people.

Here's the 411: if you live in New York and are GLBT or know someone who is or don't know someone who is but agree with equal rights or don't even totally agree with same sex marriage but don't want to be associated with dirty guido bigots, vote for Cuomo.

If you like berating people because of how they were born - you know, like openly making fun of short people or ugly people or black people or someone with a lisp or mentally challenged kids - and happily identify with knuckle-dragging bully assholes everywhere, punch it for Paladino.

Seriously, I'm expecting Paladino's next attack to be "Heh heh, his name's Cuomo. That's almost like cum and dat's wat fags eats. Ha! Blammo!"


Band PR FAIL

I'm sorry. I went way too rant-y on this one, had to give it its own post. Enjoy!


Strange Signal From Discovered Planet?

Following the Sept. 29 announcement of the discovery of Gliese 581g, astronomer Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, claimed to have detected a suspicious pulse of light nearly two years ago, that came from the same area of the galaxy as the location of Gliese 581g, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail online.

Holy shit. At this point I don't care. The planet's 20.5 LY away. Somebody's got a year to get space transport that'll take us 75% of the speed of light (I'm talkin' to YOU Virgin Galactic!) and get me on that rocket and BLAM! I'm oribiting a distant red dwarf with a Biggie Size Earth before I'm 70 and maybe see a distant alien life in person before I die. Awesome. And...go!

Boobs on Mars

Okay, so it's just the areola.

(seriously though, awesome new Mars images here)

Bunch of Crap: Drudgery, Sun Blows Wad w/ Napolitano

How the Sun shot web

So Drudge decided to post some college kid's poor camera film of raw satellite that's like 7 minutes long and entitled Katie Couric RAW: Leaked footage of Couric Making Fun of Sarah Palin (FULL). OMG it's gotta be so crazy nasty and KC's going to lose her job over it OMG! Um, no. There's one reference that Katie makes while reading Sarah's kids names: "Where the hell do they come up with...?" And that's all. Yeah, that's it. But the comment-trolls fresh from Drudge act like it's apocalypse: She's an Obama tool, she can barely read, she thinks she's such hot shit. There's a special place in hell for Repub myrmidon trolls.

Speaking of apocalypse - as in the retarded "end of the world" version and not the "revealing" that it really means - the sun kinda exploded the other day. Seriously. Okay, not totally exploded. That'd be like saying I explode every time I have a coronal mass ejection. But that only happens sometimes.

"On 1 August, almost the entire side of the Sun that faces the Earth erupted in a blaze of activity known as a 'coronal mass ejection'." Holy shit! The "entire side of the Sun?" And that's the limit of the confirmation because we couldn't see the other side? Aurora as far south as Michigan? And that was just a low-powered glancing blow? Fuck, I think we've got a nasty peak activity cycle coming.

Which will tie in nicely with "End of Days" for the gay bigots pissing their bleached-pure tighty-whiteys over the judge that struck down CA's Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. Awww...snap! Even Kim Kardashian, who's not a real celebrity, got in on the Tweeted praise! Apparently the social troglodytes think a land where first cousin marriage allowances is rampant is better than them dirty gays gettin' hitched.

Oh, and Janet Napolitano has lied to you and saved and turned your nekkid airport scans into her personal shower-quality masturbation material. Sorries! I wonder if she's one of those women who, you know, ejects coronal mass when she explodes. Now that I might incorrectly call Apoca-lips.

Richard Dawkins Says "Science Is Interesting"

Woo! We're Gonna Blow Up the Motherfuckin' Moon!

Not really.

NASA is dropping a huge projectile that will impact a crater (I know, sounds redundant), burrow 90 feet into the surface, and throw up a plume of debris 6 miles high. The satellite that dropped the projectile will then shower in its sputum and see if any of it is water. If 1% of it is water we'll have no problem colonizing the moon and mining that water for water and oxygen and hydrogen.

Of course, because it's lunar water, before you know it you've got a bunch of astronaut werewolves running around a moon base. Hold on, I've got to go write a movie script.

You can see live coverage on MSNBC tomorrow morning beginning at 7:30am.

On the Fucking Moon

"Digitally Enhanced" video of the moon landing. "Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket," I laughed until it hurt. Then watched it again and laughed just as hard.

Great Scott!

I was watching Back to the Future this morning and it occurred to me that if Doc Brown diverted the electricity away from the clock tower in 1955 to get Marty back to 1985 then the clock would never have been burned out, the annoying "Save the clock tower!" lady would never have been begging for money or have handed Marty the pamphlet, never alerting anyone to the exact time of a lightning strike.

I'd go with Lost's personal timeline theory, but sticking to that would also dictate that no matter what Doc Brown did, Marty's timeline contains the past event of lightning going into the clock and the gimmick with the wire wouldn't/couldn't have worked, like shooting Ben as a child.

(How doe something electrical irreparably damage a huge mechanical structure, anyway?)

And then Marty and Doc would've had to become gay lovers in 1955. Great Scott!

Cause for Concern Statistics

Yeah, that's hundreds per day...

Hey there loyal readers! I promised some statistics a week or so ago and here they finally are!

(if you are not using Google Analytics yet, do it now. Now I say!)

3,005 Visits have been made to this blog in the last 30 days, putting me at a hair over 100 visits a day. In that time, 2,850 Absolute Unique Visitors racked up 3,555 Pageviews which is 1.18 Pageviews on average which does not surprise us with a 26 second average time on site. 88.59% of my visitors showed up, visited no other pages, and left (bounce rate).

By far, the majority of my visitors came from the Good Ol' US of A at over 88%. But the top 5 after that were Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, France. In the last 30 days people from 74 countries visited these pages.

Top pages continue to be:
Andrew Wilkow My New Pain in the Ass - 16%
G4: Morgan Webb or Oliva Munn - 10%
Whorelore: A Warcraft-inspired Porn Series - 8%
Stephanie Mohr's Appeal: a.k.a. - Money Suckers - 8%
...and the home page - 7%

Traffic split is:

Search Engines 1,798 (59.83%)
Referring Sites 1,069 (35.57%)
Direct Traffic 138 (4.59%)

And of the people using search engines to find me, the top 25 words or phrases people are using to do so are as follows:
andrew wilkow
stephanie mohr
dungeons and dragons porn
wilkow
glenn beck is a douchebag
naked
glenn beck douchebag
andrew wilkow wife
"stephanie mohr"
olivia munn morgan webb
andrew wilkow show
warcraft pron
bad jesus jokes
bad photoshop
d&d porn
scrabble commercial
lindsay lohan
morgan webb naked
ah teens
ah-teens
jesus dog butthole
cause for concern
glenn beck shirtless
let freedom ring lyrics hannity
baman piderman

(I'm particularly proud of the glenn beck / douchebag juxtaposition)

So perhaps you don't give a shit or perhaps it's just enough to wet your willy and squirt funny-juice all over yourself. Or not.

Either way, I do hope you've enjoyed my stats. If anything changes, I'll let you know.

If you have questions about Google Analytics or any of my stats, please hit me up in the comments. Remember: IRL I'm a web developer.

OMG! Earthquakes in California?

Next month I'll be 32. As I would guess my hard-issue mind for scientific inquiry got rolling about the time I was 7, I've been listening to this shite for some 25 years now.

Large earthquakes have rumbled along a southern section of the San Andreas fault more frequently than previously believed, suggesting that Southern California could be overdue for a strong temblor on the notorious fault line, a new study has found.

Exactly. WTF? Since I was a kid I've seen them; every couple of years, someone comes out with another report saying "Ooh, those California tremors are likely signs of a Long Overdue Event." No shit. The San Andreas Fault is supposed to explode like a golf ball hit with an axe and blow LA into the Pacific. (Yes, I know that's not how plate tectonics works)

I guess it comes down to the idea of worry. Predictions are fine and a wonderful tool, but when it becomes a prediction and a "warning" over and over again it loses all scientific value and turns into panic generation.

CHANGE: Sorry. Ever start writing and have a vague idea of where you're going and then, suddenly, it goes away and you're left with a waning buzz in the back of your skull and a pile of words that has no future? Yeah, that just happened to me. Might have something to do with the trance-inducing "How to Disappear Completely" by Radiohead pouring from the stereo speakers.

The Weather Outside, It's Frightful

It is pretty dang cold here in Cincinnati. My Weather Channel widget says 12 F, and wind chill is about -3 F.

Note to all news media:

I understand that things are a little dry news-wise until Obama's start next week, with about 1000 dead in Gaza and us still sending Americans to die in Iraq and Afghanistan, but please keep in mind that during Winter months it gets fucking cold. Surprise! It's mid January and it's fucking freezing. Shit! Just like last year and the year before that and, well, as far back as I can remember. Why? It's winter! And it won't go away until March - or May if you live in Cleveland.

So take the icicle out of your puckered asshole, take a breath, and stop making everyone so batshit crazy over something that's normal.

And don't even get me started on the OMG-it's-cold anti global warming asshats. Yeah, Drudge, I'm talkin' to you.

Night Owls Are More Creative

From Wired:

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, "evening people" almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

Things suddenly make much more sense, like when I learned that there is a distinctive difference between people who organize sequentially (think file cabinet) and spatially (think pile on my desk). I'm not sloppy, just spatial; I'm not lazy, I just have an innately different balance to my circadian rhythms due to my creative nature.

Cincinnati: Zoo + Creationism = Angry

We've got a pretty good Zoo facility here in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, they recently made a relatively horrible PR decision in attempting to hook up with the Creation Museum across the river. Fortunately, the locals here handed out an earful.

The Cincinnati Zoo and the Creation Museum launched a joint promotional deal last week to draw attention to their holiday attractions.
Advertisement

It worked, but not the way zoo and museum officials had hoped.

The zoo pulled out of the deal Monday after receiving dozens of angry calls and e-mails about the partnership, which offered reduced prices to anyone who bought tickets to the zoo’s Festival of Lights and the museum’s Christmas celebration, Bethlehem’s Blessing.

Most of the protests echoed the same theme: the Creation Museum promotes a religious point of view that conflicts with the zoo’s scientific mission.

Some complained that the zoo, which receives public support through a tax levy, should not become involved with a private museum dedicated to the teachings of the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Others said a scientific institution shouldn’t link itself to a place that argues man once lived side by side with dinosaurs.

“They seem like diametrically opposed institutions,” said Dr. James Leach, a Cincinnati radiologist who e-mailed zoo officials about his concerns. “The Cincinnati Zoo is one of this city’s treasures. The Creation Museum is an international laughingstock.”

The Creation Museum is still on my list of places I must visit and blog about.

Fishy Australian Scientists

From here:



Hundreds of new marine Australian Scientists have been under our nose all along, all different species, oddly enough. A real boon for the marine biology folks who, it appears, will be studying themselves.

I Can Fly!

Yes. Yes, you can.

When we were in Columbus, we went to the Columbus Zoo. Many more aminal pictures to come, along with some choice words about crowds and stupid people.

Girls + Boys = Babies! Or Something About Math

In a recent study, it was revealed that girls and boys are equally good at math.

Great.

Next they'll be wearing pants and running for president.


Woah, put down the scimitars! Joking!

Seriously, as a former teacher and father with a 12-year-old daughter, I am well aware of the social structures in place that cause girls to dumb themselves down, to not raise their hand, to giggle "Um..." when they know the answer. In 1994 Teen Talk Barbie's words: "Math is hard!"

This is great news from both a social and psychological perspective, a good example that dominance is not just the domain juiced muscles or misplaced male aggression.

But it may yet require pants.

Stop! It's bleeding!

The One Machine

The One Machine

"Danger, Will Robin- hhhkkkth..."

"Resistance is futile."

Every computer will one day be a part of the collective; they will one day surpass the collective brainpower of humanity; they will be connected by the internet.

Forget SkyNet. Hell, even SkyNet only jacked a (all) military computer(s) [omg - can't wait for season 2 of Sarah Connor Chronicles!]. When we get to the One Machine, should it gain consciousness, we will be done. Even now, most of humanity's records could be wiped out by well-placed EMPs.

But, I guess by then - hell, even now we're so intertwined with tech and the internet and servers that we're already co-habitating, already symbiotic. End the internet and we're chewing sticks and shooting each other for ...those sticks. Or canned food, for a while. Then twinkies.

Stock up on duct tape. Guns. Melee weapons...

The Ultra-Deep Field - Most Important Image Ever Taken

It's difficult sometimes to remember our place in the universe. I once had the Hubble image (or part of it), the Ultra-deep field, as my wallpaper because it allowed me to stare at something every day that could leave me paralyzed with a sense of awe.

This video walks you through the process and it's worth every minute.

Cincinnati Cicadas - The Noise

No pics, as promised, although they're moving a lot between trees and bushes right now. No swarming yet.

But the noise is something I didn't expect. In "Independence Day," there's that one scene where the President gets overwhelmed with psychic noise of an insect nature. It's like that, but constant. And oscillating.

Right now, when it's at its peak, you can't hear people right next to you speak. And it rings in your ears. It's got an oscillating wave of about 5.5 seconds between peaks and at the peak it's enough to drive you crazy if you're not ready to just experience it and feel in awe of it. Much like the theory of taking acid: if you're not ready for anything, stay inside.

Unfortunately, I have no recording equipment to bring the pain to you. Or acid. Actually, that's probably fortunate on both counts.

Cincinnati Cicadas in Notation Only

It appears that they taste like cold asparagus, but only if they're eaten when in the Albino stage.

My dog, Gracie, ate 20 of them on her last bathroom outing.

I don't know if they'll make your pee smell like asparagus.

I may just have an answer tomorrow.