Month: April 2008
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Become a RedPill: Kill Your Television
I get funny looks when I admit to people I don’t own a TV. I get the impression they think I’m some kind of flaky activist. In fact, people have even told me as much. They seem to think it’s unnatural not to spend more than four hours a day on an activity that burns…
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Nancy Pelosi Finds Environmentalism in the Bible
Dittoheads, having been thoroughly thrashed on every rational, scientific, and practical front in their war on the environment, are now turning to theology, in a last ditch effort to keep people from embracing the principles of conservation and sustainability. Most recently, they are attacking Nancy Pelosi for repeatedly stating that the principles of environmentalism are…
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Free Creative Commons E-Book: “Clones”
Your cloned child is a mirror, simultaneously reflecting who you are and what you might have been. It’s potential was your potential. Can your clone achieve the dreams that fell to the wayside in your own life, or is it doomed to repeat your mistakes? Clones is a collection of speculative short-stories that explores the…
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Programing on the Shoulders of Giants
Recently I needed a way to quickly sort a large dataset on the fly, but the classic bubblesort algorithm was too innefficient. Luckily, a quick google search revealed a Quick Sort v2 Algorithm by Anthony Baratta, who took and modified the Quick Sort Algorithm from 4 Guys from Rolla, who adapted it from an algorithm…
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A Review of “Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex”
Bonk The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex I was confused when I read several online criticisms of Mary Roach’s new book Bonk that described it as “oddball,” “trivia,” and “idiosyncratic.” Reviewers compared this book, which is about the history of scientific research concerning sex, to books on orchids, spelling bee contestants, or some other…
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R.L. A.I.
Charles Rosen’s Shakey was an early AI that could move withot bumping into things Science Fiction is rife with intelligent machines. C-3PO in “Star Wars,” the HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” KITT from “Knight Rider,” Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the Terminator, Sonny from “I, Robot,” the agents from “The Matrix,”…
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Joining the Global Village
I remember making my first international phone call when I was in Junior high school. At that time, while my parents were away at work, my Commodore 128 computer was busy on their phone with its 1200 Baud modem, hacking calling card numbers in a process computer geeks refered to as “Phreaking.” After several weeks…
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David Brin’s Talk in Extropia Second Life
Last weekend I got to meet one of my favorite SF authors, David Brin, at a virtual talk in Second Life’s Extropia Community. David Brin in SL It was a packed house, avatars kept crashing, lag was evident, but surprisingly mild. Twice my SL interface got a memory error and crashed, meaning when I logged…
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North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: Arthropod Zoo
I’ve been struggling to find something profound and insightful about bugs and insects, but I just keep coming back to “Insects are cool.” One drawback to the NCMoNS is their lack of labels for some displays. So I have a lot of insect pictures here that I don’t have titles for. I’m hoping the Netizens…
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Fun With Animating MRI’s
“Some kids get their ears pierced… others it’s a unique haircut… Charles likes people to see his brain.” – Supervillain Brain Child’s Mother, from The Tick Cartoon My friend Carolyn and her husband Clint made this really cool animated video from her CT Scan, which I highly recommend. A few months back, I had a…
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ABC has Candidates Debate Gossip while Pressing Science Issues Languish
Considering the list of embarrassingly stupid questions ABC asked Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last night (see also here, here, here, here, and here), one has to wonder why the candidates prefer such unproductive distractions to engaging the positive and enlightening Science Debate 2008. It was infuriating watching Barack Obama be questioned about his relationship…
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Review of Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”
“There was a time when reading wasn’t just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!” – Joe Bowers, Idiocracy Channel-surfing with my siblings during a family…