ideonexus.com

Hey all you “cool” kids from my high school, remember this?

Ryan: Hey guys! Can I ride to school with you?

Cool Kids: Okay Ryan, but we can’t be seen with you, so you’ll have to ride in the trunk.

Ryan: Sweet! Now I won’t be like all those losers who ride the bus to school! Hey! You guys wanna come over to my house later and play with my transformers collection?

Cool Kids: Into the trunk Ryan.

Well, you know what? BITE ME LOSERS! Because Andrew Kavanagh’s on my Facebook! Thpppt! on you! Thpppt! I say!

That’s right, THE Andrew Kavanagh (aka. “Kav”), is on MY facebook friends list. Author of the Living in the Real World blog, 11 refereed articles, three conference proceeding papers, 23 conference presentations, and, most importantly, an occassional commenter on this blog.
Herr Docktor Kavanagh is a Research Associate in the
Department of Communications Systems at Lancaster University, specifically at the
Infolab21, whose website describes its function as:

Lancaster University’s world-class research, development and business centre in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It is a well equipped, high-tech environment shared by academic research staff, research students and businesses.

Obviously this is a ruse to throw people off the top-secret facility’s nefarious plot for world domination, but I’ll speak no more of this, lest Dr. Kav decide I know too much and makes me disappear.

Super-Dooper impressive is Dr. Kav’s thesis, Energy deposition in the lower auroral ionosphere through energetic particle precipitation (PDF). Doesn’t that just sound cool? I would love to drop that bomb on a boring conversation:

Average Person: …and the Bahamas were just grrrrrand, we just lay on the beach all day soaking up sun!

Dr. Kav: Sun, huh? You know I wrote my thesis on Energy deposition in the lower auroral ionosphere through energetic particle precipitation (PDF). Did you know that solar radiation follows an average eleven-year periodicy that produces–?

Average Person: My goodness! Is that spinach dip over there? Please excuse me.

This thesis truly deserves the word epic. Dr. Kav draws data from RIOMETER (Relative Ionospheric Opacity Meter using Extra Terrestrial Electromagnetic Radiation), SAMPEX (Solar, Anomalous, Magnetospheric Particle Explorer), GEOTAIL satellite, CUTLASS radars, DMSP satelites, EISCAT, CANOPUS, IRIS (Imaging Riometer for Ionospheric Studies), and many other observation points on Earth and in space. What an incredible cooperative effort, requiring 28 phreaking pages of references to cover (Go cry emo-boy Michael Crichton!).

A model of a solar flare showing possible sources for different radiation types

It was also pretty dang-gone educational for lay-people like myself. The first chapter and section introductions explained concepts like solar wind, the Earth’s Magnetosphere, and the Interplanetary Magnet Field. I didn’t realize that solar wind was actual plasma flowing from the sun, or that there even was an Interplanetary Magnet Field. I was only aware of the Earth’s.

Although most of the text was lost on me, I was genuinely impressed by all the research, which revealed to me a whole nother realm of inquiry into our shared reality. It’s incredible how many experts it takes to figure out this thing, and Dr. Kav is one of those important experts, and the “cool kids” should take a moment out of their mundane lives to envy him.

They should also give me back my lunch money… with Interest! (Two Dollars a day for gas money my ass.)

My blog doesn’t drive the most traffic in the world. In fact, it’s pretty sad in comparison to some of my friends, but I write, not because I enjoy it, but because I have to write. It’s in my blood, it always has, and it slave drives me like an obsessive compulsive scrubbing permanent marker off his hands.

Still, it is nice to be read. So I like to watch my blogtraffic, despite the way wordpress’ blog stats leave me wanting for details. Over at what I now refer to as ideonexus beta, my former blog life, I took a glimpse at my stats on statcounter and saw this single spike of activity:

Ideonexus Beta Traffic Spike

So there were 96 page hits in one day, but only six unique visitors. I immediately drilled down on my web stats to learn more about who was taking so much interest in my blog that day. It began at 6:06 AM Eastern Time, when google.be referred this user to my Science Fiction VS Fantasy article, which led them to read Things are Getting Better and Legalize Prostitution at 6:27AM my time. They then meandered about the site for a bit, glancing at, but not reading, my Anthropogenic Global Warming article, until they found an extensive essay I’d written in May 2004 on Fascism in Film at 7:08AM. From this point they continued on, reading more than 16 articles from the site (These were from back in the days when my articles were New Yorker in length.).

Finally, at 10:50AM, they’d finished browsing this old blog for the day, having spent almost five hours reading my old writings. What an incredible ego boost this person has given me, and who I only know as this little red dot in Brussels:

Visitor from Brussels

This has happened on my old blog maybe a few dozen times in about four years of writing for it. Not much at all, but knowing that a few dozen people enjoyed my writing so much that they burned the better part of day immersed in it makes this obsessive behavior of mine almost worth it. : )

OLPC Logo

I’ve ordered mine, have you ordered your’s? All the cool kids are ordering one. Don’t you want to be part of the “in” crowd?

Not only does ordering one of these super-duper, ultra-nifty, best-thing-since-sliced-bread-cubed improve your health, fortunes, and make you more appealing to members of the opposite sex in general, but every laptop you buy for $399 means that a needy child in third-world country will get one too!

And then you can both go online and play deathmatch! Deathmatch!! DEATHMATCH!!!

I can’t wait to start pwning kids living in refugee camps around the world in Ethiopia, Rawanda, and Darfur at Quake while chowing-down on bean burritos in the comfort of my climate-controlled modern home. It’s gonna be Total ownage!

I’m already working on my snappy one-liners:

“Whaddya pause to wind up your laptop?”

“Hey! Whydontcha go farm some gold for me?”

“You’re so poor, you can’t even pay attention! Cause… you know… You’re all worried about clean water, and food, and all that genocide and stuff… Nevermind.”

Third World is Pwwned!

Kurt Vonnegut Photo by Ryan Somma

He would be 85 today. This great writer survived the firebombing of Dresden, wrote dozens of books and short stories, and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

Although he objected to the description, Vonnegut wrote many science fiction stories. In his book Cat’s Cradle, he came up with the idea of ice-nine a molecule that converts other water molecules to it’s form, turning room-temperature water into ice. Although science fiction at the time, today scientists are aware of prions, which are protein molecules that convert other molecules to their structure. This is understood to be the mechanism behind Mad Cow Disease.

In his book The Sirens of Titan all human accomplishments, from Stonehenge to the Great Wall of China, are revealed to be for the purposes of sending a message on behalf of a stranded alien requesting spare parts for its ship. His book Galapagos includes the evolution of people stranded on the Galapagos Islands into finned and feral animals after the extinction of the human race. His most famous book, Slaughterhouse Five follows a man “unstuck in time” as he visits different moments in his life. All of these books are precious for their statements on the human condition.

Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11^th of this year from brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home.

There’s a bit of odd numerical synchronicity in this date of birth (11/11). In some parallel universe, where humans have an extra digit on each hand and foot, today would be Powers of Eleven Day. What a tribute that would be, for a writer who was so unique in writing and worldview.

I am officially a professional blogger! The blog is called Geeking Out, it’s for my local paper, I’m getting paid for it (barely), and I’ve added the RSS feed for it to this blog’s sidebar. : )

Keep an eye out for my upcoming nervous breakdown trying to keep up with all of this.

Post this pic:

LOLCat Mollie “i can has hugz?”

Despite having one of her back legs amputated, skin grafts to her front paws, and one sadly amusing temper tantrum, she has made a full recovery and resumed her position as neighborhood bully. Mollie is a scrapper cat. This picture is definately too sad for the Realisticats.

My brother Jason had some great suggestions to caption this:

“I AM THE NEW BREED OF PINK DOOM RADAR DEATH CALICO!”

In LOLCatSpeak translates: “i r pink doom raydar deth kat,” which definitely works, but Mollie looks way too gosh-darn pathetic to pull this off. Same for these next two:

“50 Cent ain’t got Shit on Me!”

I liked this one:

“I tried inventing the light bulb but Edison’s goons got to me first”

Great joke, science-related, and humorous for anyone aware of Thomas Edison’s penchant for regularly electrocuting cats as a publicity stunt, but too obscure a reference.

This one is strangely inspiring, and captures how I feel about this effort:

“At least I tried…what have you done with your life?”

He would be 73 today. As Sagan was dying, he stressed the fact that his quasi-atheism did not make him fear death at all, but rather he was always overjoyed for having the opportunity to even briefly exist and experience at all. The world is a much happier place for his having existed.

Sagan’s many works, including his inspiring Cosmos series and his book Demon-Haunted World resulted in my personal ionian enchantement, where I fell in love with the natural world, shook off my own childish ideas about reality, and made science my number one cause.

Carl Sagan was also an avid pot smoker, which does nothing to detract from the brilliance of his writting, and everything to argue for decriminalizing marijuana use.

HAWGWARSH

Not to be outdone by Steve Milloy, I’m offering a BAZILLION-JILLION DOLLARS (That’s more money than infinity!) to anyone who can disprove the following Global Warming Hypotheses:

HAWGWARSH Hypothesis #1

A genetically-engineered race of super-elves, funded by the axis of Cultural Villainy’s Sierra Club, Lambda Horizons, and China are rubbing their buttockses together in homoerotic fashion in an effort to scare people into the evils of environmentalism, promote the homosexual agenda of eroding the American family, and destroy the American tradition of Market Socialism. These elves are so satanically advanced that they are only detectable through absolute, unquestioning faith.

HAWGWARSCH Hypothesis #2

Ultimately we have nothing to worry about with Global Warming because Zorgo the mighty, herald of Reganomics and champion of the NeoConservative faith, will swoop down from beyond the dome of stars painted overhead to vanquish the tree-huggers and chicoms to hell and chauffeur all Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Republican Party donors to that great big New Republic cruise in the sky. After which, the Left Behind books will begin.

RULES

By submitting an entry to the Hyper Ass-Whupping Global Warming Yadda Yadda Yadda, you agree to adhere to the following terms and conditions:

1. Entrants agree to be bound by the HAWGWARSH Rules.

2. Entrants acknowledge that the concepts and terms mentioned and referred to in the HAWGWARSH hypotheses are inherently and necessarily imaginary, and therefore intangible, supernatural phenomena completely lacking in material form and substance. I–er–HAWGWARSH reserves the exclusive right to define all properties of said entities and mechanisms (Sucks to be you.).

3. ideonexus.com, in its sole discretion, will determine the winner, if we feel like it. This will depend heavily on how much ExxonMobil pays us to not declare one, and whether we feel like parting with such a large sum of money.

4. However unlikely, should there be a winner, they will receive the bazillion-jillion dollars in a single, lump sum rubber check, after sufficient time has been allowed for us to transfer our net-worth to offshore bank accounts and file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

5. Submissions must be 100% original, and we mean 100% ORIGINAL. You may not cite the research of others, use any known language, math, or logic in your submissions.

6. Unlike our data, your data must be publicly available and readily accessible to the public.

7. Contest opened for submissions on November 3, 1907. So far it’s gone 100 Years Without any Takers!!!

8. An undisclosed entry fee is required for each entry submitted. Send us money, if it isn’t enough, we’ll send you a notice “Reserve Not Met.” Like Ebay, but without refunds and user feedback.

9. No entries will be accepted. So why bother with a deadline?

10. Contest results will be announced February 29, 2100. Failing to be alive at the time of the announcement disqualifies applicants from winning.

11. Submissions must be laser-etched on steel tablets in triplicate and delivered to me in person. I’ll be in the shower. You may alternately put them in the mail addressed to Santa Claus, since that’s about the same response you’ll get.

12. Entries must include an abstract of no more than 700 words, but long enough for us to figure out if you really know what you’re talking about. That way we can skip to entries more easily ridiculed.

13. Entrants consent to HAWGWARSH editing their submissions and posting them to this blog with snarky commentary and supplemented with children’s drawing attributed to you.

14. You may not sue HAWGWARSH, ideonexus, or Ryan Somma for any shenanigans.

All entrants will get a free stamp on their forehead that reads, “ideonexus pwwned.”

So what have you got to lose?