For reasons of aesthetics and functionality, I've moved to WordPress.

http://statehighwayone.wordpress.com/

There is a slight change in tone and there will be no comments.

I hope you are all well.

Just ignore him and maybe he'll go away.

That was a good speech, Lloyd. If I was 25 and liked cock, we could be something.
A few years ago, in an attempt to demonstrate to my brother-in-law how stupid it was to call shitty things "gay" (slash "ghey"), I began referring to shitty things as "Christian". Can't make it to drinks tonight? Christian. Got a parking ticket? Christian. Someone stole your iPod? That's the Christianest thing that's ever happened to you!

Turned out to be fairly effective. So I appreciate Tom Ackerman's decision to make it clear to people that he no longer recognises marriages. If gay couples have to be called longtime companions or life partners or whatever, then so can everyone else.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. There is a reason we needed stronger words for more serious relationships. We know it; now they can see it.

Last night, I had a dream that I was an actor in a remake of Indiana Jones directed by Peter Jackson. Peter started screaming in pain. I checked his head, and someone had made an incision overnight. Some kind of remote-controlled pain generator had been implanted in his head. It was soon revealed that Hillary Clinton had drugged Peter Jackson the night before, inserted the chip, and was now torturing him until her demands were met. I confronted her, but she refused to admit what she had done.

You should click here to read more Buttersafe.

For years, we have all wondered, who would win in a fight between dinosaurs and American Civil War soldiers? Well, Professor Cline's Dinosaur Kingdom has attempted to answer this age-old question.

What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy. As you enter, a lunging, bellowing T-Rex head lets you know that the dinosaurs are mad — and they only get madder. A big snake has eaten one Yankee, and is about to eat another. An Allasaurus [sic] grabs a bluecoat off of his rearing horse while a second soldier futilely tries to lasso the big lizard. Another Yankee crawls up a tree with a stolen egg while the mom dinosaur batters it down. Mark has augmented some of these displays with motors: toothy jaws flap, tails and tongues wag.

Yay! Oh, wait.
Anti-consumerist anarchists The Yes Men have done it again, distributing a fake New York Times to New Yorkers this morning, with a sample of what they'd like to see in the news on July 4th next year.

Gothamist has a very comprehensive look, with some sweet videos. And a hat tip to Disinfo.

The Yes Men have previously pulled such stunts as posing as Dow Chemicals spokespeople on the BBC, declaring that Dow would be taking full responsibility for the Union Carbide chemical disaster that devastated the town of Bhopal, paying for medical bills and compensation. This forced Dow to come out and officially say that they would be doing nothing of the sort.

A documentary was made of some of their exploits, and curiously, this documentary has disappeared off the list at freedocumentaries.org sometime in the last month. (A quick Google for freedocumentaries finds people linking to it last month with a full list of what was available then.)

Could it be that, knowing this prank would renew interest in the team, they asked the site to remove their film, so that they could benefit from the increased sales? Come on, guys. Where's the anti-consumerism?

"The funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

I also experienced a different type of peer pressure. My first day out, I was approached by a succession of other prisoners, echoing the same guidance as the first guy: "We don't 'bang' here; we don't play [prison] politics, racial or any other kind; and we respect every one, including the guards." That speech has been an indelible part of my daily living for the past six years.

For more, check out: My Shawshank Redemption by Dortell Williams.

It's a skewer. Cos of skewed results. Also, I need a coffee.
Something needs to be said about the text/phone polls that Close Up (and others) have been running recently. Throughout the 6pm news, advertising for the upcoming episode of Close Up will include an offer to have your say in their polling by texting or calling an 0900 number.

Last night's example was one for preferred Prime Minister.

The problems with this should be obvious. They are not an indicator of the views of the New Zealand voting public. They are an indicator of the views of the Close Up viewership who, for whatever reason, are inclined to pay money to influence the outcome of the poll. Nothing besides time, money and good manners prevents someone from voting as many times as they like for their view.

Commentators are quick to describe the poll as "unscientific". Frankly, they are too quick to describe it as unscientific, and should probably spend some more time describing it as complete bullshit. Simply calling it an unscientific poll gives the viewer/reader the impression that perhaps it has a higher margin of error than a scientific poll - a less accurate indicator of the same thing. The problem is, it's not even that.

A poll that purports to indicate the views of the nation is limited by the following factors.

It's polling Close Up viewers. As much as Close Up might like to think that it is watched by everyone in the country, or at least a group that is proportionally representative of everyone in the country, it is not. In last night's show, for example, there were three times as many viewers in the 30-59 bracket as there were in the 15-29 bracket. And while the 30-59 bracket is split fairly evenly between male and female viewers, four times as many women in the younger bracket watched Close Up last night than men. Close Up viewers will also be people who understand spoken English and don't prefer Shortland Street (or Campbell Live).

It's polling people who will pay. Whether this means people who can afford to waste money on Close Up polls, or if it means people who are stupid enough to waste money on Close Up polls, it's a specific fraction of the nation's population.

It's polling the number of votes, not the number of voters. While it's possible that, in some fit of integrity, the Close Up polling system only accepts one vote from each phone number (and turns down the extra revenue of subsequent votes), it's unlikely. And even if it did, that would again make the polling potentially misrepresentative of multiple views in a single household.

What this means is that not only does the polling favour those with the dollars to spend and the lack of sense (cents, get it, ha ha ha, hilarious) to refrain, it gives a weight to their opinion proportional to their willingness and ability to vote multiple times. And, of course, there is the recent accusation that National purchased a $25,000 machine that makes repeated votes to skew the result.




These things wouldn't be so bad if the results were completely ignored. But instead, we start hearing about how 75% of New Zealanders think John Key won the first leaders debate. It's entirely possible that 75% of viewers do think that John Key won the first debate, but we could only find that out through scientific polling, not the equivalent of New Zealand Idol.

Given the impact on the public of hearing these things, it is simply irresponsible to produce these television pay polls in the lead-up to an election. All we can really know is that 100% of people who cast votes via a pay poll are the kind of people who cast votes via a pay poll.

Cleverbot: What is the most important principle of Darwinian Evolution?

Ryan: survival of the fittest

CB: No that's Darwin.

R: What's the answer?

CB: Answer to life?

R: What is the most important principle of Darwinian Evolution?

CB: Survival of the fittest, why do you ask?

Kick Turing's ass at Cleverbot.com.

Not allowed to play at the Republican National Convention protests? They'll see about that...

Worldmapper is a neat little tool that produces maps of the world where countries are shown in a scale proportionate to various statistics. What you see above, for instance, is the proportion of all "territory level decreases in carbon dioxide emissions between 1980 and 2000, that occurred there." That's why a few continents are missing.

Hat-tip to greenUPGRADER, who has a whole bunch of them in the post that links to.

"Use meat tenderizer for enzymes. If you can't find tenderizer, try using pineapple juice or contact lens cleaning solution." My kind of science. And I find myself wondering... what does DNA taste like?

Here's a curious thing. Alley Insider has found that Fox News photoshopped (sorry, Adobe, I mean altered an image with Photoshop or perhaps some other image-altering tool) photos of people who, presumably, they don't like.

Christopher Hitchens has changed his tune on whether or not waterboarding is torture - after trying it out for himself.

As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, “Any time is a long time when you’re breathing water.” I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

Pick up the August issue of Vanity Fair, read the article and you can even watch the video.

Jim Webb wants to be Obama's vice-president. While the Wikipedia page is informative, it won't paint the picture that 23/6 ("some of the news, most of the time") has painted with its rundown of Webb's vital statistics. The quote from one of his novels, at the bottom, is... memorable.

The Carpet Bagger Report has an amusing little find about some people's use of auto-replace. Here's an excerpt:

But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

Hilarity ensues.

Maher is just all right with me.

An interesting comment on MeFi about Sesame Street:

They are all monsters, that's the point. The show is for children, don't forget. They are monsters the kids don't have to fear. The show's message for kids was "We know you're sometimes afraid of monsters, but not all monsters are bad.

Sometimes monsters can be cute and cuddly and quirky and funny. Elmo's a monster and he has such a cute giggle! These are the good monsters.

Not like the monster sitting next to you on the sofa, watching the TV. Not like the monster WHO TOLD YOU FOR THE LAST TIME TO STOP CRYING.

Not like the monsters who kick your toys and curse under their breath. Not like the monsters who say you stole their youth and take pills because YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY. Not like the monsters who meet strange men at the door and leave you home alone. Not like the monsters who hit with their hands, or their words. Not like the monsters who come into your room at night stinking of whiskey and sweat, with madness in their eyes and a belt in their hands.

On Sesame Street, the monsters have not HAD ENOUGH, and they aren't doing it FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

Your monsters are not brought to you by the number 4 or the letter M. Your monsters don't want you to come and play, they want you to LEAVE THEM ALONE.

Cookie monster is safe, and so are Elmo and the Count. Even Oscar and Bert are your friends even if they are bit grouchy or fussy. Your monsters think our monsters are harmless.

To them.

Your monsters bought you a Tickle-Me Elmo doll, didn't they? They bought it to JUST SHUT YOU UP ALREADY. So they let you play with Elmo and make him laugh and giggle. But Elmo doesn't just laugh and giggle. Elmo loves you, and he listens.

And he records.

And soon, Elmo is going to tell you exactly what to do.

(From MeFi. Via the Last Psychiatrist.)

A pretty good updated version of the famous old capitalist pyramid (below). The difference between the two shows the difference between the realities of capitalism (and socialism as a reaction to it) in the days of Marx and today. (Click here for a larger version of the new one.)

I believe the most important difference is the globalisation of the economy and the corollary outsourcing of poverty. While in the 19th century, one could, say, take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London...

...and see the people suffering at the bottom of the capitalist heap, these days you can only really see them on TV, and even then you have to go out of your way to find out about it, and even then there's such a long causal string between your actions and their suffering that you don't feel responsible or potent to do anything about it. Part of that is the media, of course, which is why us Westerners are so happy to be wedged in between the soldiers and the police.

Missing from this new pyramid, I think, are the politicians, who should be standing just behind the police, as I don't think they're quite represented by the guy at the top (at least in New Zealand; the US is a different matter).

Here's the old discrete-nations pyramid:

Kum Fac'e
If the World Could Vote is one of those sites that tell us what everyone supposedly already knows. In this case, it's that the whole world would rather have Obama as president of the US than have McCain. It's not a new trend. After the 2004 election, there was a spate of sites featuring Americans apologising to the rest of the world for the results. There was even a bag company that included an apology in their exports to France.

In general, the developed world is to the left of US politics. Up and to the left, if you add an axis representing, say, literacy or education. And you'd expect New Zealand to follow that same trend. But here's the curious thing. New Zealand is one of the few countries that favour McCain over Obama.

In his, we join Thailand (96% McCain), Venezuela (100% McCain) and Kenya at 100% McCain, which presumably says more about Venezuelans and Kenyans who have the money to afford a computer that anything else.

And that's it. Human-rights paradises Israel and Indonesia are split down the middle. Israel's split probably shows, more than anything, the level of education of Israelis, as they've apparently seen through the Republican spin that Obama wants to single-handedly destroy their country. Haaretz, a particularly good Israeli newspaper, commented on this even before Obama had finalised the nomination, in an interesting editorial. Probably more on that later, as the Obama smears are downright fascinating (as is Obama's response to them.)

So, why are online Kiwis more in favour of McCain than Obama? It's not a huge majority - 55% - but it stands out in contrast against the votes of other Western countries (Australia around 90% Obama, UK 92% Obama, etc.) Any simple answer is likely to be simplistic, but there has to be something to explain the anomaly. I doubt it's a matter of racism, since our neighbourly International Home of Racism is sitting at 90% Obama.

I'm not going to speculate on it further - I'm more likely to chat about it on Thursday's Wire show on bFM, around 1.30pm. But someone with their finger more firmly on the pulse might have some suggestions.

Behold. A series of photos of some people
being way more talented than me. Bastards.

A clip from one of my new favourite shows, Snuff Box, with Matt Berry (Sanch from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace).

Having been on the receiving end of accusations of racism for my criticism of Israel's appalling treatment of its indigenous people, and being acquainted with many people who make no distinction between Jewish people and the actions of the Israeli state, I'm always very glad to be able to point out that not all Jewish people support Israel's actions. Further, there are non-Jewish Israelis (just as there are Christian and Jewish Palestinians). And, finally, not all Israelis support their government's actions.

Of course, the majority of Israelis do support their government's treatment of the Palestinians, to varying degrees within a spectrum that most in the international community finds abhorrent. I'm not qualified to say why, but I suspect it's a combination of compulsory military service and parental conditioning. It's true that most Israelis support their government's actions, just as it's true that most Israeli chicks are intensely gorgeous.

Anyway, last weekend one Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, marched against the occupation. They took photos. You can see them by clicking on the word: shalom.

Hat-tip to Decrepit Old Fool.

Also Stupid Evil Bastard.

More mesmerising than Neave TV, WikipediaVision shows where anonymous edits to Wikipedia are being made, almost in real time, and what is being edited. And there goes the rest of my day.

Hat-tip to Kiwiblog for this.

I'm afraid of Americans.
Towards the end of his time in government, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld had a chat about Iraq with military analysts about basically how bad things were going. A recent mass Freedom of Information Act application managed to get thousands of documents and audio files from the Pentagon, and so we can listen to the whole damn thing if we want to.

It's an hour-long .wav file, here.

Fortunately, Newsvine's jfxgillis has gone through and pulled out some of the more interesting clips, along with his own analysis. You can read his commentary and hear the clips at Liquid Lunch with Donald Rumsfeld. Here's an excerpt:

...the questioner prods him back on topic by asking, "Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there [on Capitol Hill]?"

Rumsfeld's answer is nothing short of stunning. No, not the part where he claims Bush is a "Victim of his success." That's just stupid. And no, after hearing his previous insult to the American public, his condemnation of us because "we don't have the maturity" to recognize the threat of terrorism--the further we get from 9/11, the less and less... he trails off. But that's not shocking, nor is his doomsday scenario, all things considered.

So let's summarize. According to Rumsfeld and his media sycophants, America has real problems: We're weak-willed, we're immature, we're forgetting what happened, and oh my God, we've elected Democrats to Congress. So, what's the "Correction" for those problems? Listen to him:

Another 9/11 attack.

More commentary at Prison Planet, if you like.

Paul Neave, a British flash designer, has made my day with Neave TV. He recommends a "deep-seated urge to be totally bewildered", which fortunately I possess, and I was not disappointed. Random clips from shows and movies from around the world, switching channels with every click.

I was subjected first to some Russian talkshow with a dancer in an electronic suit that played electronic music with every move of his body; then a clip from a Godzilla film; then Dave talking to HAL in 2001; then the ever-wonderful Rejected animation. I had to stop there, because I could see this seriously eating into my work productivity.

Nice work, Paul Neave.

Click here for the madness.

A quick note - there's no obvious way to stop it besides navigating away from the page or closing the tab, but Neave's included a "back to the intro page" option on the TV's right-click menu.

...is a follow-up to the 200th.

State Representative Davis apologised.

According to Democratic state senator.

Just quickly.

I'm enjoying the hell out of tutoring.

It's my birthday today.

Auckland is sorry to see Richard Bol leave, on account of he's awesome.

"No one would suggest boycotting Britain for invading Iraq. No one would suggest boycotting France for nuclear testing in the Pacific."

Ladies and gentlemen, the "centre-left" of New Zealand politics.

Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, she's been at a conference of like-minded centre-left world leaders. Nice.

It has recently come to my attention that there are certain of you, dear readers of this esteemed web log, who have it in mind to defame me. And, whereas I find it the pinnacle of the basest flattery to do such (can anyone else see the oxymoron?), I fear I must discourage you from doing so.

While my suit is not yet sub judice, anything that may be said between now and when this action finally comes to court may unfairly prejudice my chances of ramming a big, fat legal cock up the collective arses of the Harland-Smith family.

To conclude, don't test my patience.

I may have overestimated how much free time I'll have.

Hiatus again. Sorry. There are a bunch of other people with rights to post in this blog, AND THEY'RE VERY BLOODY WELCOME TO DO SO. Even Tama, who'll probably just use it to invite people to defame him.

Apologies for the two weeks of silence. I've been busy getting into the swing of things being back at university. I am now studying postgrad philosophy (political philosophy and free-will research); tutoring first-year students on Freedom, Rights and Justice; continuing to embody pure awesome; and editing New Zealand's first poker magazine, the first issue of which comes out in April.

So, as you can imagine, I've been quite busy.

But not so busy that I can't find something fucking cool for you today.

Behold: the universe is fucking large.

A brief silence while I deal with becoming a student again.

If you can get over the shitty narration and the wincey feeling of killing an entire ant colony, this is pretty fucking cool and worth watching.

Xavier Goldie has a new blog. He is into plants and politics.
He must REALLY like Trevor Mallard.

Wait. Ducks aren't plants.

If you don't know how this works, most of the stuff below involves clicking on a picture to expand the text beneath.

Being linked to by a popular blog is like having visitors showing up unannounced. On one hand, I'm delighted. On the other hand, I'm quite naked, and my wang (which here represents the absence of today's post) is flapping about in the open.

So, just quickly, here are 13 unconventional facts that affect the (US) dollar, and if you like me grew up on Usborne books, delight in a full web scan of The Usborne Book of the Future.

I leave you with this thought:

We perfected toothbrush technology decades ago. Why is society's resources going into inventing new kinds of toothbrush (cheek cleaners? cheek cleaners?!) and going into marketing them when children are dying from lack of simple clean drinking water? Is this system efficient? Is it guided by a benevolent invisible hand? Or is it rather the invisible claw of increasingly amoral systems of surplus production and consumption?

And when ATMs were invented, why were bank tellers not sent home to pleasant paid retirement for the rest of their lives? What are we heading towards? We could already satisfy the needs of everyone on earth with significantly less than 40 hours a week in labour. As technology increases, labour is worth more - so how come fewer work at supplying necessities - and more work at supplying unnecessaries - rather than everyone working fewer hours?

What are we heading towards? Is there an end to this cycle within the current framework? Does anyone have time to think of these things when they're working hard to earn money to buy things they're reliably informed that they want?

Roy Orbison cling-film porn and peace to all of you. Have a safe weekend.

PS. Russell Brown so sexy.

Wide load.
A character I love in a comic I love - Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan - uses a weapon called a bowel disruptor. It has various settings, from causing simple diarrhea to complete rectal prolapse. He enjoys using it, sometimes on cops.

Speaking of cops and inducing bodily functions from a distance, which is what we are now speaking of, due to my cunning wordplay, check this shit out. It uses pulses of flashing light to cause nausea, disorientation, perhaps vomiting. Non-lethal weapons almost seem more unpleasant than lethal ones, you know?

The Last Words of Henry Porter

I want to thank Father Walsh for his spiritual help. I want to thank Bob Ray (Sanders) and Steve Blow for their friendship. What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer. People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight. The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a thirteen-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river. You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice. This is America’s equal justice. A Mexican’s life is worth nothing. When a policeman kills someone he gets a suspended sentence or probation. When a Mexican kills a police officer this is what you get. From there you call me a cold-blooded murderer. I didn’t tie anyone to a stretcher. I didn’t pump any poison into anybody’s veins from behind a locked door. You call this justice. I call this and your society a bunch of cold-blooded murderers. I don’t say this with any bitterness or anger. I just say this with truthfulness. I hope God forgives me for all my sins. I hope that God will be as merciful to society as he has been to me. I’m ready, Warden.

In December 2006, a group of journalists and dissidents launched a website dedicated to providing both anonymity and publicity to corporate and state whistleblowers, with a forum for releasing leaked classified documents. Today, if you type www.wikileaks.org into your browser, you'll be told the server can't be contacted.

Cayman Islands bank Julius Baer's well-paid lawyers successfully sought a court injunction against Wikileaks via their Californian host, Dynadot. The DNS records and local hosting have been removed, but once again, the internet is too smart for hierarchical control and there are roughly a zillion mirrors. You can read Wikileaks' own coverage here.

You can't stop the signal, guys.

So, what was the bank's problem? Wikileaks - which has already been censored by the usual suspects in China - has been publishing leaked documents showing that the bank is potentially involved in dodgy money-laundering dealings. The whole of the Cayman Islands is already famous in pop culture for being a tax haven and black spot on financial watchdogs' radar, of course, but specifics are far more interesting. Here is the list of documents leaked, and here is some background information on Bank Julius Baer.

YOU'LL FLOAT TOO.
I'm watching a documentary (it'll screen on TV2 on Wednesday, 27th of Feb) about Real Dolls and the people who love them. Now, I normally enjoy being scared. It doesn't happen often, in terms of movies and books, but when it happens, I love it. And this documentary is terrifying me.

These people, who have - or believe themselves to be having - serious relationships with these inanimate objects... And they're creepy as fuck, of course. Very much about Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley. They're creepy by themselves, but what's genuinely terrifying me is the guys who love them.

It's not just about sex for them. The dolls aren't purely masturbatory aids. They're replacements for actual human contact in guys who don't want to have to deal with women, or feel incapable of dealing with women. Listen: "They don't react at all. But if you don't mind that, they're good fun. They're certainly better than going without any female company at all." Listen: "Especially, like, in the really early daylight, just being able to see her, you know, looking at me, regarding me, that sort of thing, and me doing the same back."

Okay, it's less unsettling now that I'm writing about it. But it was just that moment of mental vertigo, you know? That point where your mind takes a peek at what it thought was solid ground and finds itself over a sheer drop into utterly alien territory. People can love things.

The geometry is all wrong.

Sarah Silverman is five times as cute as a button.
YouTube commenters are the stupidest people in the world.

Apparently this optical illusion was created by Phillippe Schyns and Aude Oliva of the University of Glasgow. The pictures reverse if you take a few steps back. (Fewer steps for me, now that I'm wearing these bastard old contacts again and everything's fuzzy.)

And remember to vote Liberal!

I've seen parts of this before, but not the whole thing, and at the time didn't recognise Morrow from Chaser's War on Everything.

I guess this guy got kicked off another My Little Pony forum.

Click here.

I can't stop watching this.

It is from one of the most famous Yahoo Answers ever.

To a pessimist, that's like half not a billion dollars!

I don't know where this came from,
but it's pretty funny.

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be
a steep and rough trail. This is us.
- George W Bush

So Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. In fact that man is a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man... and Bush the president.

Scott Horton's articlette, "The Illustrated President", in Harper's, is an interesting read. For a start, it turns out that Bush mistakenly named his autobiography after a painting of a horse thief. Of course, it turns out that Salon.com spotted this first.

It's important to occasionally rail off some statistics to put things in perspective. For example, how many children would you say were killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict last year? If you guessed 60, you're hella right. 60 kids. That's pretty fucked.

Here are a few things to remember. When the news (and that includes mainstream New Zealand media) talks about Hamas "taking control of Gaza", they were actually democratically elected by the Palestinian people. They are the democratically elected government. That's important to remember. Also, "Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas" refers to "unelected Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas".

Here's another interesting point. What's going on in Gaza at the moment is FUCKED. For those who don't know, essential supplies have been blocked from getting into Gaza, including food and fuel. The fuel is used for generators. The generators are used for the hospitals. The hospitals are used for keeping people alive. This is collective punishment. Blatant collective punishment.

So, punishment implies a crime. What is the crime for which 1.5 million people are being punished? Rockets being fired at Sderot, an Israeli town. You can read the LA Times article here , about how hard life is in Sderot:

They take quick showers, afraid to miss an alert, no longer sleep in upstairs bedrooms and avoid public places at what are considered peak Qassam times. And when the alert sounds, people drop everything, including their unpaid groceries in the aisles, costing Daniel Dahan more than $100 a day, he said. He owns Super Dahan, the grocery his father started. They run to one of the square concrete shelters, known as betonadas, after the word for cement, that increasingly dot the town. Then they pull out their phones, to check on their children.

And let's face it, that's pretty terrible. Living with that kind of fear must suck. Dropping your groceries, phoning your kids... Hell, it's going to cost US$25,000 per house to add safe rooms to protect people. Who can afford that?

Well, presumably the people of Sderot can afford that. And apparently they have groceries and phones. Yes, it's a tough life there. And their kids! I mean, as I said above, 60 children died in the conflict last year. Some of them must have come from Sderot, right?

No?

Well, some of them must have come from Israel, right?

Yes! Yes, one child out of 60 who died last year from violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict was Israeli. His name was Mahmoud Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Krenawi, 11, of Rahat, near Beersheba. He was a Bedouin with Israeli citizenship, and he was shot by the Israeli Defence Force, in his head and pelvis, while picking figs.

Oh, wait. Even the Israeli kid wasn't killed by Palestinians. He was killed by the Israeli Defence Force too. This is very disconcerting. So, basically, hospitals are being shut down, 1.5 million people have had their vital supplies cut off, who are living in shit anyway, because they democratically elected the wrong people and include some minority who fire unguided rockets into a town 1km away, disrupting grocery shopping and killing one Israeli child every two years, on average, since they began being fired in 2001.

There's another statistic for you. On average, since 2001, Qassam rockets fired into Sderot have killed 1 child every two years. Four children since 2001. THREE KIDS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN GAZA BY THE IDF IN THE LAST MONTH! NO CHILDREN HAVE BEEN KILLED IN SDEROT IN THE LAST YEAR! This is not a proportionate response.

It's just fucked. And the media's attempts to "show both sides" and "be objective" just results in a ridiculous presentation of the affair as being roughly equal, with equal accountability and equal power to resolve the situation.

Anyway, according to Tom Feeley, here is how to donate food directly to Palestinian kids. No political, religious or militant groups involved.

PS. Statistics from Remember These Children.

PPS. Yes, life in Sderot is fucked, and it shouldn't be. Missile attacks on civilians are by definition terrorism. It's just fucking paradise compared to what the IDF do to Gazans.

Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most popular books at every college (manually -- as not to violate Facebook's ToS). These ten books are indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college. Download the average SAT/ACT score for students attending every college. Presto! We have a correlation between books and dumbitude (smartitude too)!

Books <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores

Plot the average SAT of each book, discarding books with too few samples to have a reliable average. Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it.

Click here to see the interesting results of this odd notion.

Clearly, I'm not much of an artist,
but you get the idea.

The 65.120.42.146 pm webserver has been compromised […] As a side note, please do not ever use the old passwords on anything.
I am loving Portfolio's online mirror. I've recently read a whole series of quality articles there. Check out this one on online piracy and a neat meeting with a teenage hacker. Or maybe you'd be interested in an article about Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's Funny or Die online comedy site. Or perhaps you'd just like to go to Funny or Die and check out Jerry O'Connell doing Tom Cruise.

Sorry, this is the best pic I could find.

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Surprisingly -- stunningly, in fact -- research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?

Read the rest of this interesting LA Times article:

Why people believe weird things about money.

Tomcruise
Uploaded by downcrush

Now available from here.

I'm a massive geek. Here is one of the reasons. Television brought me the future today. A room-sized computer with a name and bespectacled owner... who did magic tricks?! His ballet-doing girlfriend and closet homosexual athlete friend and BMX-trick-doing black-guy friend?! AND THEY SOLVE CRIMES, HOLY SHIT. With a little help from their detective friend, and his detective mate "A Martinez" (not to be confused with "The Martinez").

So digital! So watch-out-for-static!

And can it be that there is an entire fucking episode of Whiz Kids on YouTube? Yes, it can be.

Here's a curious thing. Scylla, at the Straight Dope message board, decided to try waterboarding himself to see what the fuss is all about. For those who don't know, waterboarding is an interrogation technique used by American intelligence on detainees. It simulates the sensation of drowning without actually drowning you, triggering the Fuck I'm Gonna Die reflect.

Read Scylla's report here.

Ian Wishart has kindly responded to my recent post on chapter four of his book The Divinity Code. Rather than create a bulky ongoing commentfest, I prefer to post further articles (mainly because Blogger's comment system combined with my layout equals shit).

One of my criticisms was that Ian's application of the anthropic principle assumed that earth life is the only kind of life. At least, that is the premise that would have to be added to make the reasoning sound. I made a separate criticism that his argument assumed that life is special enough to demand more explanation than any other kind of physical phenomena. While I made the points separately, they can be made together. Here is Ian's argument.

1. Life requires exactly earth-like conditions to arise.
2. The chances of earth-like conditions arising are impossibly small.
3. Therefore it is unreasonable to believe it happened by chance.
4. Therefore it was done on purpose.
5. Therefore God.

I suggested that there was an implicit assumption that earth life was the only kind of possible life - or else the first premise is false. If earth life is not the only kind of possible life, then the first premise becomes "earth life requires exactly earth-like conditions", which is tautologous and therefore true, but invalidates the argument. To illustrate this, I made an analogous argument:

1. Ryan requires exactly Ryan's Life conditions to arise.
2. The chances of Ryan's Life conditions arising are impossibly small.
3. Therefore it is unreasonable to believe it happened by chance.
4. Therefore it was done on purpose.
5. Therefore God.

The Ryan argument seems obviously silly, because the chances of anyone else's life being just right for them to arise is just as unlikely as Ryan's life. The earth-life argument seems less silly because while we're familiar with the idea of other potential people, we're less familiar with the idea of other potential forms of life.

We know from everyday experience that there are millions of people who could correctly think, "Fucking hell, if Mum and Dad hadn't had that last oyster 27 years ago, I wouldn't be here!" It requires more thought to imagine the possibility of other potential kinds of life which could reflect on their existence and say, "Fucking hell, if we didn't orbit a binary star system, we wouldn't be here!"

Ian has recently been given a similar response, where someone has replaced "earth life" with "Cambridge cosmologists". Ian quotes their counter-example:

1. If an all-powerful god made the world so that Cambridge Cosmologists would thrive, then Cambridge Cosmologists would thrive
2. Arguably Cambridge Cosmologists do thrive
3. Conclusion: An all-powerful god made the world so that Cambridge Cosmologists would thrive.

His respondent adds, "The problem with this argument is that Cambridge Cosmologists can be replaced with anything (including yours truly or tape-worms) and therefore is vacuous."

It's worth noting here that this is not really the argument that Ian was putting forth in chapter four. There is nothing like the first premise ("If God made the world so that Cambridge cosmologists would thrive, then they would") in his argument.

Ian's response is thus:

Your context is set too vaguely. If Cambridge Cosmologists, and only Cambridge Cosmologists, appeared to exist, this would be a closer analogy to the situation we currently find ourselves in...

It's not an entirely adequate response to Mr Cambridge, but I'm not going to go into that, because Mr Cambridge's email was not an entirely adequate response to Mr Wishart.

What it shows, though, is that I need to be more clear in my Ryan's Life analogy. Presumably, what Ian is saying to me by quoting his response to Mr Cambridge is that my analogy would only be analogous if I was in fact the only person to exist. That's fair enough, given how difficult an analogy it was. I'll make it a bit clearer.

Ryan = earth-life.
Ryan's Life = the conditions on earth that give rise to earth-life.
Other people = other potential forms of life.
Other people's lives = other potential lives that give rise to non-Ryan people.

The surprise that I am Ryan and not someone else is analogous to the surprise that earth-life exists and is not some other kind of life. It is analogous not because Ryan is the only person who exists, but because Ryan is the only person who is Ryan, amongst others who are not. The difference is that we can see other people, other potential lives, but we cannot see other potential forms of life. That was, in fact, my whole point - that this is why it's intuitively compelling to believe that earth-life is unbelievably special, whereas it's not intuitively compelling to believe that Ryan is unbelievably special. Because we have examples of alternatives to Ryan, but no examples of alternatives to earth-life.

This isn't lost on Ian, and he's provided a few arguments that, in fact, earth-life is the only possible kind of life. Biochemists have suggested that only carbon or silicon has the versatility and stability to be a basis for life, and carbon moreso than silicon. That narrows "life" down to "carbon-based life". A fair enough argument. The problem is that carbon is fairly prevalent in the universe, and we don't really know what other potential self-replicating patterns of matter could arise involving it.

We can speak of the unlikelihood of an entire cell forming spontaneously. We can speak of the lower unlikelihood of RNA forming spontaneously. We can speak of self-catalysing molecules - some of which we have produced. But we don't have comprehensive knowledge of every possible self-replicating molecule and the chances of it forming spontaneously in conditions earth-like or not. We really don't know the odds, though we do know that there's an awful lot of time and an awful lot of space for them to play out. In other words, we have no reason to conclude that exactly earth's conditions are required for carbon-based life to arise - still only the tautology that exactly earth's conditions are required for exactly earth's carbon-based life to arise.

Those paying close attention will note another analogy here. There's no end to my statement, "We don't know all the possible arrangements of matter and their likelihood of spontaneously occurring." We can never know. Isn't that analogous to the God of the Gap of the Origin of Life? A "Get Out of Argument Free" card?

Well, perhaps, and I suspect that's the attitude of many scientists. "We don't have a definite naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on earth, therefore there is a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on earth that we don't know." It's not even worth throwing "yet" on the end of the statement, because we can never know for sure, as I mentioned earlier.

Again, we're back to the odds. Scientists assume there is a naturalistic explanation for life on earth - either one they've imagined already or one that have not - because there always has been in the past. Schizophrenia is not caused by demons. Palsy is not caused by fairies. Lightning is not caused by gods. Rainbows are not placed there by God. Mental states are not souls, but directly alterable chemical processes. Almost everything in the past that was previously given a supernatural explanation now has a proven naturalistic one. What are the odds that this one is different?

Let's say you line up a thousand people, and you ask each one, "Have you ever lied?" Each one tells you they haven't. Then you come back with a lie detector and ask them all again, "Have you ever lied?" The first 999 were lying, but when you get to the last guy, it turns out he died earlier that day. You can't test him with the lie detector.

What do you believe about him? That he was the one guy in a thousand who actually had never lied? Do you believe neither that he had ever lied nor that he had? Or do you believe that he was the one guy in 1000 who had never lied, because some people are telling you so, and it's just dumb luck you can't prove for sure that he lied?

That's the reason for the "faith" in naturalistic explanations of the origin of life. It's a habit born from centuries of experience. It's just unrealistically unlikely that this is the time that supernatural explanations trump naturalistic ones, after the last thousand examples of naturalistic explanations trumping supernatural ones.

But I digress. Back to the matter at hand. I claim we can't know the odds of life spontaneously occurring somewhere in the universe, sometime from its beginning to its end, even if we limit ourselves to carbon-based life. To me, it's a safe assumption that life of some sort is inevitable in the universe - there's a lot of universe. If those incalcuable odds are different, I could be wrong, and life may well not be inevitable. It may be incredibly unlikely. Let's look at a different part of the argument, the most fundamental:

Even if life of any kind is incredibly unlikely, why does that demand special explanation? There are innumerable things in the universe that are incredibly unlikely. It's incredibly unlikely that the third neutron from the left of the exact centre of Alpha Centauri is moving in the direction it is. Why does this particular phenomenon - life - demand special explanation when nothing else does?

WE, THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF THIRTEEN INDIGENOUS GRANDMOTHERS, represent a global alliance of prayer, education and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come. We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. We believe the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future. We look to further our vision through the realization of projects that protect our diverse cultures: lands, medicines, language and ceremonial ways of prayer and through projects that educate and nurture our children.

"Will there ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark?"
Season three, episode six of Veronica Mars is all about Veronica trying to clear her name from plagiarism allegations. Meanwhile, her awesome boyfriend Logan keeps writing a few seconds after an exam is finished. The lecturer doesn't accept his paper.

He asks, "Do you have any idea who I am?"

The lecturer says, "No, and I don't care."

And Logan puts his exam inside the pile and walks off.

Ahem.



Still, I like the Veronica Mars writers enough to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe this was a witty little joke about plagiarism. After all, they did the cool homage to Lebowski - "You're entering a world of pain, Larry" - and didn't make a big deal about it. I make a big deal for them. I'm like that.