I always enjoy reading her advice, but Sars earned herself a big batch of approval in today’s Vine when she took a woman to task for wanting to put her cat to sleep because it kept peeing on things. Sars is always very outspoken about pets being a responsibility, even when they become old or sick or develop a behavior problem. As she says, your pet is part of your family. If you can’t handle that level of responsibility, get a plant.
Archive for June 28, 2002
How to Drive
For your Friday fun-time you must go watch Yes and No a flash movie showing correct and incorrect driving practices and their usual outcomes. Very funny! [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
Category: Internet Fun /
Ryan and Jacob are Fakes!
Ryan and Jacob are fakes! I hadn’t noticed talk of the latest e-mail spam until a copy showed up in my box this morning, and I’ll admit that it was compelling enough I read it. If you haven’t received a copy, it starts:
There is something extremely wrong with every single person in this world. They seem to be part of a pointless simulation.
“The Matrix” has portrayed this idea somewhat, yet we watch it and go back to our daily lives. Yet in this very life, underneath the seeming diversity in people’s opinions, values, talents, and interests, there is something that makes everyone the same. It is as though this planet is populated only by mindless fakes, objects that provide the appearance of intellect on the surface but are based on only mechanical reflexes and primitive thought patterns.
It goes on to state that the sender, of course, is not a fake, and he has found a single other non-fake (through the internet) and is looking for others to join up with them and start a underground community to eventually break the fakes’ control of the world. They have a webpage with more information, but because undoubtedly most of us are detested fakes, it’s hidden and their suggested method for finding it is to use a “major search engine” (their given list for which it works does not include Google…it seems their page hasn’t been crawled yet) and search on pairs of words from a list they give. At that point you can read more and find a questionaire to fill out on which they will judge whether you are a fake or can join them. The mail was signed “Ryan and Jacob”.
Having lost patience with trying their instructions to search for their word pairs in a non-Google browser after about two minutes, I found them in two clicks with the Google search “Ryan Jacob fakes”, which led me to the weblog leuschke.org, which kindly supplied a link to their actual site: Eternal Ambition. Or, as I’m hoping a Googlebomb might eventually dub them, Ryan and Jacob are fakes! It’s exactly as ridiculous as you would expect:
I exist as an impartial, and impartial only. I know of no bias or preference, I know of no wants or needs. I feel emotions like every human and yet I have no desire to change anything about them, and I don’t see the need to act because of them.
I am only able to think objectively. I exist as nothing more than an instance of reason and intellect. I make decisions based only on that, and act only on that.
I have no ties, allegiances, bonds, or attachments. There is no material possession, friend, or acquaintance that means anything to me. There is nothing and no one that can be taken away from me that would matter. There are no activities that I want to do or that I would not be able to stop doing.
I have no regrets of anything I have ever done or not done, and I know I will not regret any actions I may take now. I do not believe in any moral codes or standards (there is no “right” or “wrong”, just “logical” and “illogical”, I have no objections to killing, suicide, theft, or just about anything, as long as the reason is logical), my thinking is pure and unconstrained.
How nice to know that the future of humanity is a tired blend of Spock and Ayn Rand, with a modern veneer of The Matrix. I feel inspired.
Category: Internet Fun /
Photo Album
I kept thinking I’d do something more interesting with these images, but with it nearly being July, I’m going to give up and declare my photo album of images used in Screenshot entries from 2001 complete. Each photo has a link back to the archive page on which it appears. While they’re not all good, there’s a few in there I’m very happy with, and a couple of fun panoramics too.
Category: Crafts and Cooking /
Mann’s AI Thoughts
While it’s not as exciting as my friend who managed to buy a many-hundred-dollar-valued autographed book for a couple of bucks recently, I had what I think was a very cool used book experience yesterday. I spotted a copy of Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind on the $1 rack outside the local used book store, which I’ve been curious to skim. Well, it was on the cheap rack because there are notes scattered through the margins of the book, but they’re tidy notes, so I decided to buy it anyway. However, on closer examination, the book was labelled as having belonged to a “W. Robert Mann”, which any math major will immediately identify as the name of one of the authors of the classic Advanced Calculus by Taylor & Mann. Granted, it’s plausible that multiple people would share this name, but the previous owner was also kind enough to note that the book was purchased at McIntyre’s Book Shop, which is in Pittsboro, NC, not far from UNC, where Dr. Mann is listed as a professor emeriti. And the comments clearly come from someone fluent in mathematics. So, I am going to chose to believe that I’ll be reading the criticisms of the man whose textbook introduced me to advanced mathematics. His very first note reads:
One of the seductive fascinations of mathematics is that every subject turns out, in the long run, to be merely a small part of something else.
Category: Reading & Writing /
Open Source Music
Offering even more public domain content, Project Gutenberg (the online public domain book project) has created the Project Gutenberg Music Web Site as an archive for public domain chamber music scores. Knowing the quality of their book site, I can only assume this will be a fabulous resource for musical types.
Category: Internet Fun /
Yummy Sludge
In a headline that screams to be weblogged, the EPA says toxic sludge is good for fish (though a later article indicates that it was the Army Corps who said it, not the EPA – incidentally, the same group dumping the sludge). In studying the effects of toxic sludge in the Potomac, the report said that since the sludge forces fish out of the now toxic water, the fish go to more remote areas where they are less likely to be caught. The statement that it “protects” the fish is a real misuse of that word. It’s sort of a “if you’re going to make a hostile environment, make it hostile enough the wildlife just leaves” argument. Furthermore, the statement does not actually show evidence that the fish are successfully relocating – it just posits that this could be the case and suggests this be looked into before dumping is stopped. While I agree that current environmental legislation makes this a relevant fact to consider, to suggest that toxic dumping can be good just because nature may find a way to accomodate the poisons is morally repulsive. [via Sigma Xi: In the News]
Category: Science /
Personal Dewey Coding
Is your book collection getting out of control? I certainly have the occasional fantasy of organizing and databasing up my books, and do keep them in a roughly thematic ordering. If you want to get really obsessive, though, this site will help you determine the first three Dewey decimal digits of your books, which I would think would be plenty for any home library. It’s also fun to browse aroundthis really impressive classification structure for all of human knowledge. And it is pleasing to see computer science linked with information and general reference, rather than with technology, though it is a little surprising that it doesn’t share a top level category with mathematics and other sciences.
Category: Reading & Writing /
Seasoning Cast Iron
Housekeeping days around here, both in reality and cyberspace. I finally updated my commenting code, so if you noticed the problems with HTML tags in them, that’s hopefully fixed. Around here, I hung a ton of photos, baked a lovely blueberry pie, and finished seasoning my new frying pans. I didn’t get around to making my new curtains yet, though. I mean, I’ve been pretty swamped by actual work around here too lately.
By the way, a comment below reminded me that some people don’t like cast iron because they were told you can’t wash it with soap. You absolutely can use soap in cast iron – just use a gentle liquid soap and don’t scour, then dry thoroughly. And when I started using my own I remembered another oddity – don’t panic when, the first time you use yours, it appears that you’ve horribly burned the bottom. Cast iron is silvery gray when you buy it, but well used cast iron is very dark black – obviously, there’s a transition period. You can see in this picture how much it looks like I just ruined my pan, but it’s fine (though it would appear that I didn’t let it heat very evenly…) Eventually, the whole pan will change color, but don’t worry if even after a dozen uses it still looks splotchy.
Category: Crafts and Cooking /
Patriotic Yarn
I love the Lion Brand yarns, particularly their Wool-Ease, but their blurb on their website promoting their latest new yarn is hilarious:
Chunky USA is an American-made yarn tailored to the fast-paced American lifestyle: no dye lots, so the colors always match; a bulky weight, so it works up fast; and 100% Acrilan Acrylic, so it’s easy care.
Who knew a yarn could be so patriotic?
Category: Crafts and Cooking /