I think I may be done surfing blogs. I may just spend the rest of my time mining the archives over at Reality Carnival. This guy is just amazing – if you haven’t already done so, please go over there and play with things like this: In the beginning…
Here’s something cute I picked up over at Reality Carnival: Rabbit grabs cursor.
The New York Times has published a list of the 25 ‘most provocative’ questions facing science, and as a public service, I’m going to try to answer them:
(1) Does Science Matter?
For lack of a more elegant alternative, yes. I actually prefer to use common sense and intuition whenever I can get away with it, but they’re notoriously unreliable. Different jobs require different tools, and you can’t really press a sledgehammer into service when what you need is a logic probe.
(2) Is War Our Biological Destiny?
No. War is our biological legacy, not our destiny.
(3) Will Humans Ever Visit Mars?
Yes. It’s inordinately expensive, extremely foolhardy, and completely unnecessary, but we won’t let that stop us!
(4) How Does the Brain Work?
In my case, not very well. Seriously, though, the brain is a terabit wetware multi-tasking multi-threading parallel processing supercomputer that maps heuristically a transform from our sensory inputs to a 4-D model of the universe that it stores holographically in a revisionist refresh process that attempts to minimize power usage and maintain internal consistency. (Duh.)
(5) What Is Gravity, Really?
I don’t know, but it still sucks.
(6) Will We Ever Find Atlantis?
No. She’s long since dropped the two t’s from her name and founded a hugely successful music career on songs like Ironic.
(7) How Much of the Body is Replaceable?
All of it, as long as you do it a little bit at a time. As a matter of fact, human beings replace every molecule in their body about every 7 years, on average.
(8) What Should We Eat?
Things that taste good and aren’t too hard to chew.
(9) When Will the Next Ice Age Begin?
When it gets cold enough.
(10) What Happened Before the Big Bang?
Nothing. Everything. (OK, that’s a bit facetious, but basically, this question is really asking if the 4-dimensional object of our universe, where everything is always happening everywhere all at once all the time has a boundary, and if so, what lies outside that boundary, so I stand by my first answer.)
(11) Could We Live Forever?
Yes, but I’m only 41 and I’m already getting bored.
(12) Are Men Necessary? …
At least this one.
… Are Women Necessary?
Survey says… Yup. Uh huh. You betcha.
(13) What Is the Next Plague?
Hard to say, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with spoiled white mama’s boys doing bad rap. I actually like the Eminem song they’ve been playing to death, but I don’t care how much he slurs his words, “cold water” and “Cole Porter” do not rhyme.
(14) Can Robots Become Conscious?
Probably, but the jury is still out on whether people can.
(15) Why Do We Sleep?
Because bed would get pretty boring if you just laid there in the dark for 8 hours. Actually, sleeps serves two main purposes, to conserve energy while there’s not enough light to do anything productive, and to give the brain-computer time to revise its holographic world-model so it works better the next day than it did today.
Another interesting question is how much sleep is really necessary and if there are better alternatives like Polyphasic sleeping.
(16) Are Animals Smarter Than We Think?
No. We tend to anthropomorphize animals excessively and give them way more mental credit than they’re due. Including us.
(17) Can Science Prove the Existence of God?
No. God is similar to the ether – if you believe, then it’s perfectly obvious that divinity permeates everything, if not, it’s nowhere to be found.
(18) Is Evolution Truly Random?
No. Evolution has to work with what’s already around, which severely limits the range of possibilities both for starting points and viable results.
(19) How Did Life Begin?
Magic.
(20) Can Drugs Make Us Happier? Smarter?
Yes.
(21) Should We Improve Our Genome?
Yes.
(22) How Much Nature Is Enough?
All of it. Within a very narrow range of tolerance, the environment as it exists is both necessary and sufficient to support life as we know it.
(23) What Is the Most Important Problem in Math Today?
I don’t know enough to know. My personal most important problem is that I’d really love to understand why e^(pi*i)=-1. That seems really important.
(24) Where Are Those Aliens?
I believe there could actually be life elsewhere, though I doubt it (too much magic) but I sure don’t think they come here routinely to perform anal probes and build pyramids.
(25) Do Paranormal Phenomena Exist?
No, though like everyone else, I often wish they did.
Elliott Smith – I’m not worthy.
Although I was taken with the song that played during the closing credits of Good Will Hunting, I really first became aware of Elliott Smith when I heard his tribute to the Beatles with his performance of Because in the closing credits of American Beauty.
So I’m drinkin’ some beers last Saturday, and I think to myself, ‘Hey, I could do the same thing and pay tribute to Elliott by doing my own version of I Didn’t Understand,’ and let me just say that trying to imitate Elliott Smith is a humbling experience of ‘damaged bad at best.’
Anyway, here’s a couple of hours’ honest effort:
Chris Benson sings I Didn’t Understand.
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I’ve just been astonished to learn that Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl in the original TV series, also played the infamous green woman on Star Trek. | |
| Update: OK, now it makes sense. I thought she was this other green woman from the pilot The Cage played by Susan Oliver, but she was in a different episode called Whom Gods Destroy.
I always think The Cage was black and white. |
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Here’s a good link I ran across for the age-old question, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” (well, my age, anyway).
Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. Last Friday we came down with what I’m assuming was some kind of Halloween-triggered virus at work that turned about eight of our machines into blue-screen door-stops, including my trusty Blog-mobile. Took all day Friday and Monday to straighten it out with multiple Windows/Office/Network Client installs. We still haven’t figured out what really happened, but whatever it was, I haven’t seen any evidence of new Halloween virus reports.
Last couple of days have been pretty busy over here at Asparagus Pee blog. J-walk blog posted a link that’s driven 40-50 extra people here each of the last two days, and I’m starting to build up a pretty good content base for natural search hits.
Some recent searches, over and above ‘asparagus pee,’ ‘gooblek,’ ‘pee in pants,’ etc., where I feel like I may actually have helped some people find what they were looking for were:
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eggo rocket surgery
-and-
eggo syrup commercial
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mtv+nrablacklist
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and my favorite: passaic mary tree stump pic
Interestingly, the Germans must be really into pee fetishes, because I get anywhere from 3 to 5 of my 6 to 8 normal hits per day from different people just searching for ‘pee’ on google.de, and my blog is like the 641st search return for that term, which I relate with no particular pride.
Today’s been interesting. Four of us met at 5:30 AM and drove down to San Francisco’s Golden Gate University for a 4-hr seminar that was billed as being ‘especially for catalog marketers and inventory managers,’ that was basically a remedial Excel class. I don’t use Excel much because I have real-time tools I’ve created in character-mode DataFlex for working with our native database files, so I learned a couple of interesting tricks, but was it worth getting up at 4:00 AM and spending 4 hours in a car? Nope.
I’m not personally ready to go no-meat all-the-time, but I do think we have an obligation to treat the animals we eat with some degree of benevolence and dignity. This is interesting: The Meatrix.
Our next door neighbor’s kid suggested that Emily should go trick-or-treating as a water bottle, and darned if Mrs. Asparagus Pee didn’t make it happen. The label says, ‘Emily’s Best crystal clear Auburn Tap Water.’
A site called stoptheNRA.com is taking petition names at NRAblacklist.com. Guns are almost always a bad idea – check it out.
If you totally disagree, here’s a link to the National Rifle Association – MyNRA
I sure wasn’t expecting to have to say this, but here’s a very clever quote from Attorney General John Ashcroft:
“There are only two things necessary in life — WD-40 and duct tape… WD-40 for things that don’t move and should, and duct tape for things that do move and shouldn’t.”
Okay, this is getting links all over the place, but it’s worth a look – the guy’s wife had an affair and left him, so he’s selling her beanie babies on E-bay: Collection of 26 Beanie Babies from Ex-Wife.
There’s a great article at Guardian Unlimited called 300 Reasons We Love the Simpsons. Reasons 66-75? Bart’s 10 best blackboard lines: I was not touched ‘there’ by an angel; Fire is not the cleanser; Fish do not like coffee; Pork is not a verb; The hamster did not have ‘a full life’; No one wants to hear about my sciatica; I am not my long-lost twin; The nurse is not dealing; I will not surprise the incontinent; Temptation Island is not a sleazy piece of crap.
It’s been pointed out to me by a kind reader that ‘It’s not rocket surgery‘ is a registered service mark that belongs to Steve Krug of Advanced Comonsense. (Way to go Steve.)
Said reader also discovered that Asparagus Pee blog is the unique hit for ‘Eggo syrup “rocket surgery”.’
One of the things that’s really sad about Elliott Smith’s story is what we consider newsworthy. If he’d finished his 2-CD masterpiece and released it to critical acclaim, it’s doubtful I’d hear about it other than by word of mouth or accidentally running across it. But he throws himself on a steak-knife, and now he’s big news. I guess it’s some small consolation that his music will undergo a posthumous surge.